Midway through last week all of the events of the last month and a half caught up to me and my introverted self put its foot down.
Turns out that several major family medical emergencies, exploring and wrestling with whole new faith convictions while visiting friends in another country, starting a new semester of nursing school in a brand new area of practice with a steep learning curve, starting to wean off my antianxiety meds, working part time, making changes in diet and exercise practices, and just generally trying to maintain a personal, social, and spiritual life can be exhausting.
I know I'm overwhelmed when I sit in a nursing class before the lecture begins, and the voices of all those women (and a very few men) talking and talking and talking grates on my nerves to the point where I kind of want to scream at everybody to shut up, or I might lose it!
With all that in mind, I set this weekend aside for rest. (Mostly.)
I am thankful that this semester I have three day weekends in which to actually manage rest a bit more fully.
I slept late on Saturday morning, got up and did a bit of housework, took a long nap, did a bit more housework, and then went to bed. It was pretty much divine. I think I only saw one other human being the whole day, and talked to one on the phone. Perfect for my tapped out self.
Sunday was kind of the opposite. I had breakfast with a long time friend (stuffed french toast - not the best ever, but not bad). Then we did a couple errands together. I followed that up by going wedding dress shopping with one of my oldest friends. She's getting married in February, and I'm her maid of honor, so I joined her and her mom to start the process of finding "the dress". And then I followed that up with a family dinner of sorts with a few extra people, which is pretty much the norm for our family. Lately family dinners have sometimes been hard - they emphasize that even though I'm the oldest sibling, I'm the only one who is single, without any current prospects, and that goes to a different church than the rest of the family. Those dinners sort of emphasize the ways in which I often struggle to fit within my family, and if I'm honest, I was kind of dreading this one when my mom called to set it up. That said, it was lovely! The addition of the extra bodies this time served to keep it from being quite so awkward feeling, and even though I was tired, it felt good to laugh with my family. I rounded off the day by borrowing mom's car so I could tackle my grocery shopping for the week, then caught a ride home and pretty much crashed. (Though I enjoyed every bit of the day individually, the sum total of all that people time was still a bit much for my exhausted introvert self.)
And then there's today. I pretty much slept until 11. I know, I know, lazy, right? I justify it by reminding myself that for the next four mornings this week my alarm will go off at 4:15, 4:15, 6:30, and 6:30 to kick off very full days. I laid in bed for a while catching up on email, and then planned to kick off my day with the last of my pre-made smoothies. Alas, the smoothie was off, so I tackled the first recipe on my list of cooking for the week - pina colada quinoa. As I'm sitting to write this, I have a bowl of it in front of me, and it's not too bad! I'm cooking a lot of quinoa these days in the midst of the effort to eat less starch, and mostly eliminate gluten from my diet, and this is definitely not the best of the quinoa recipes I've tried, but it's edible, and hey, I get to add another recipe to my list of new recipes I've tried this year. I'm planning to round off this day with a few errands, and a coffee date with a friend, and then some homework. The first quiz of the semester is happening this week, and I have some policy and procedure documents for neonatal care that I need to work my way through. Oh, and I'm finally going to hopefully make some progress on the baby blanket I'm making for my future niece or nephew, since, you know, he or she is now two days overdue and likely to show up any time!
Rest. Busy. Rest. That's my weekend, and while I could use maybe one more day of lying low, the fact that I'm now aware of just how drained I'm feeling is a good thing, and will let me manage my energy and schedule a bit more carefully for the next couple weeks while I work to recover some equilibrium. Sweet deal.
And with that, I'm off to finish off my breakfast quinoa and get started on some of the little things that I want to do while I'm puttering around and resting today! Happy Monday!
Turns out that several major family medical emergencies, exploring and wrestling with whole new faith convictions while visiting friends in another country, starting a new semester of nursing school in a brand new area of practice with a steep learning curve, starting to wean off my antianxiety meds, working part time, making changes in diet and exercise practices, and just generally trying to maintain a personal, social, and spiritual life can be exhausting.
I know I'm overwhelmed when I sit in a nursing class before the lecture begins, and the voices of all those women (and a very few men) talking and talking and talking grates on my nerves to the point where I kind of want to scream at everybody to shut up, or I might lose it!
With all that in mind, I set this weekend aside for rest. (Mostly.)
I am thankful that this semester I have three day weekends in which to actually manage rest a bit more fully.
I slept late on Saturday morning, got up and did a bit of housework, took a long nap, did a bit more housework, and then went to bed. It was pretty much divine. I think I only saw one other human being the whole day, and talked to one on the phone. Perfect for my tapped out self.
Sunday was kind of the opposite. I had breakfast with a long time friend (stuffed french toast - not the best ever, but not bad). Then we did a couple errands together. I followed that up by going wedding dress shopping with one of my oldest friends. She's getting married in February, and I'm her maid of honor, so I joined her and her mom to start the process of finding "the dress". And then I followed that up with a family dinner of sorts with a few extra people, which is pretty much the norm for our family. Lately family dinners have sometimes been hard - they emphasize that even though I'm the oldest sibling, I'm the only one who is single, without any current prospects, and that goes to a different church than the rest of the family. Those dinners sort of emphasize the ways in which I often struggle to fit within my family, and if I'm honest, I was kind of dreading this one when my mom called to set it up. That said, it was lovely! The addition of the extra bodies this time served to keep it from being quite so awkward feeling, and even though I was tired, it felt good to laugh with my family. I rounded off the day by borrowing mom's car so I could tackle my grocery shopping for the week, then caught a ride home and pretty much crashed. (Though I enjoyed every bit of the day individually, the sum total of all that people time was still a bit much for my exhausted introvert self.)
And then there's today. I pretty much slept until 11. I know, I know, lazy, right? I justify it by reminding myself that for the next four mornings this week my alarm will go off at 4:15, 4:15, 6:30, and 6:30 to kick off very full days. I laid in bed for a while catching up on email, and then planned to kick off my day with the last of my pre-made smoothies. Alas, the smoothie was off, so I tackled the first recipe on my list of cooking for the week - pina colada quinoa. As I'm sitting to write this, I have a bowl of it in front of me, and it's not too bad! I'm cooking a lot of quinoa these days in the midst of the effort to eat less starch, and mostly eliminate gluten from my diet, and this is definitely not the best of the quinoa recipes I've tried, but it's edible, and hey, I get to add another recipe to my list of new recipes I've tried this year. I'm planning to round off this day with a few errands, and a coffee date with a friend, and then some homework. The first quiz of the semester is happening this week, and I have some policy and procedure documents for neonatal care that I need to work my way through. Oh, and I'm finally going to hopefully make some progress on the baby blanket I'm making for my future niece or nephew, since, you know, he or she is now two days overdue and likely to show up any time!
Rest. Busy. Rest. That's my weekend, and while I could use maybe one more day of lying low, the fact that I'm now aware of just how drained I'm feeling is a good thing, and will let me manage my energy and schedule a bit more carefully for the next couple weeks while I work to recover some equilibrium. Sweet deal.
And with that, I'm off to finish off my breakfast quinoa and get started on some of the little things that I want to do while I'm puttering around and resting today! Happy Monday!
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