Returning from vacation in 3... 2... 1...
Mr. Moon and I had a fabulous time on vacation! We got to see four beautiful souls get married, reacquainted with some old friends, met some new ones, exhausted ourselves, ate too much junk food, and all-in-all had a marvelous time.
Before moving down here, we spent two months driving back and forth, 3 hours at a trip, multiple times a week. It was a wonderful time to reconnect, discuss our goals and dreams and giggles and hopes and sorrows and concerns about anything that came to mind. It was helpful, because it gave us both time to process and strategize. Even the next two months we had plenty of time in the car together, with his job a half-hour or more commute each way.
Lately our car trips have become shorter as have our tempers. Our time with just the two of us for company and no chores to be doing has become less frequent, and less time on each trip. I noticed it slipping away and thought it was a blessing, more time to Be Productive. But productivity is not the end-all, be-all of existence, a concept which I struggle to internalize and perhaps always will. I greatly appreciated the long drives together we got this week, the brainstorming and the ideas and the outpouring of thoughts I hadn't even yet formed into words, and lest you think it was just me talking, as verbose as I am that was hardly the case. Truly a conversation.
As always on these long drives, the conversation came around to priorities. Who did we definitely need to see while we were home and who would we forgive ourselves for putting off until next time? What do we want to be focusing our energies on in these coming months, and what are we willing to sacrifice to accomplish those goals? What is our plan for our late night and early morning, providing what could be the only food for a friend's wedding the next morning? Yes, everything from the mundane (get the lasagna in the oven before breakfast, let's make sure we get our bedding washed after our sandy trip with mildew hotel room) to the strategic (how do we want to go about getting new flooring in the house, and when can we get friends over for cuban sandwiches?).
We even delved into the philosophical, about the struggle of deciphering between fatigue from fibromyalgia, apathy from depression, the body's natural process of avoiding pain based on past experience of certain activities causing it (i.e. don't get out of bed, the last twelve times you got out of bed you hurt yourself, IT'S A TRAP!), and of course pure coziness. What is fatigue and what is "laziness"? Why do I insist on feeling guilty over this perceived laziness when much of this situation involves factors outside my control? Is there more I could be doing or is the fact that every time I've pushed myself harder than I am now has been too far an indication that ANYTHING more is too much? How much of that is fatigue and how much of that is low metabolism from low activity? How do I even go about finding the answers the these questions and making my life a better one to be living?
One of the results is this: We've decided to drastically scale back our gardening aspirations. The raised beds will be a project for a future home. For now we will limit ourselves to an herb garden and maybe a vegetable or two, though the herb garden will probably still be growing a bit more variety and quantity as we get the herbs back into the raised bed area instead of just tiny pots.
Another result is strangely both an increase and a decrease in our expectations of my daily accomplishments. For reasons which I can't possibly get into here, my goals for any particular day are very simple: Brush teeth (gets me up at least once), do one in-bed physical therapy exercise and one out-of-bed one (maybe at the same time as brushing teeth but if not, gets me out of bed a second time), and take my allergy pills. Anything else I accomplish is gravy. If that's all I get done, that's a good day anyway at current productivity levels. So hopefully this will help combat the depression fatigue (which often dissipates with some activity) and the "but this bed is so cozy, the blanket people have made me their queen and I can't leave them now" factor. If nothing else, it will be more information to be able to figure out where to go from here, medically speaking. Maybe one day I will have a life again?
I have aspirations and dreams. Mr. Moon has his own, and some of them even overlap. I want to have a reason not to feel so hopeless that we can ever achieve them.
Before moving down here, we spent two months driving back and forth, 3 hours at a trip, multiple times a week. It was a wonderful time to reconnect, discuss our goals and dreams and giggles and hopes and sorrows and concerns about anything that came to mind. It was helpful, because it gave us both time to process and strategize. Even the next two months we had plenty of time in the car together, with his job a half-hour or more commute each way.
Lately our car trips have become shorter as have our tempers. Our time with just the two of us for company and no chores to be doing has become less frequent, and less time on each trip. I noticed it slipping away and thought it was a blessing, more time to Be Productive. But productivity is not the end-all, be-all of existence, a concept which I struggle to internalize and perhaps always will. I greatly appreciated the long drives together we got this week, the brainstorming and the ideas and the outpouring of thoughts I hadn't even yet formed into words, and lest you think it was just me talking, as verbose as I am that was hardly the case. Truly a conversation.
As always on these long drives, the conversation came around to priorities. Who did we definitely need to see while we were home and who would we forgive ourselves for putting off until next time? What do we want to be focusing our energies on in these coming months, and what are we willing to sacrifice to accomplish those goals? What is our plan for our late night and early morning, providing what could be the only food for a friend's wedding the next morning? Yes, everything from the mundane (get the lasagna in the oven before breakfast, let's make sure we get our bedding washed after our sandy trip with mildew hotel room) to the strategic (how do we want to go about getting new flooring in the house, and when can we get friends over for cuban sandwiches?).
We even delved into the philosophical, about the struggle of deciphering between fatigue from fibromyalgia, apathy from depression, the body's natural process of avoiding pain based on past experience of certain activities causing it (i.e. don't get out of bed, the last twelve times you got out of bed you hurt yourself, IT'S A TRAP!), and of course pure coziness. What is fatigue and what is "laziness"? Why do I insist on feeling guilty over this perceived laziness when much of this situation involves factors outside my control? Is there more I could be doing or is the fact that every time I've pushed myself harder than I am now has been too far an indication that ANYTHING more is too much? How much of that is fatigue and how much of that is low metabolism from low activity? How do I even go about finding the answers the these questions and making my life a better one to be living?
One of the results is this: We've decided to drastically scale back our gardening aspirations. The raised beds will be a project for a future home. For now we will limit ourselves to an herb garden and maybe a vegetable or two, though the herb garden will probably still be growing a bit more variety and quantity as we get the herbs back into the raised bed area instead of just tiny pots.
Another result is strangely both an increase and a decrease in our expectations of my daily accomplishments. For reasons which I can't possibly get into here, my goals for any particular day are very simple: Brush teeth (gets me up at least once), do one in-bed physical therapy exercise and one out-of-bed one (maybe at the same time as brushing teeth but if not, gets me out of bed a second time), and take my allergy pills. Anything else I accomplish is gravy. If that's all I get done, that's a good day anyway at current productivity levels. So hopefully this will help combat the depression fatigue (which often dissipates with some activity) and the "but this bed is so cozy, the blanket people have made me their queen and I can't leave them now" factor. If nothing else, it will be more information to be able to figure out where to go from here, medically speaking. Maybe one day I will have a life again?
I have aspirations and dreams. Mr. Moon has his own, and some of them even overlap. I want to have a reason not to feel so hopeless that we can ever achieve them.
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