out of the groove…
I’m feeling completely out of my groove. It’s not that my routine was in great shape before my health took its tumble last week either. I’ve been feeling rather out of sorts for months now. The difference with before I felt so shitty and now though, is that I’ve had a week of hardly sleeping (or doing much of anything except wimpily moaning and groaning a lot) to take a long look at my life.
It’s getting on for two years since I wrote this entry. In it I decided to streamline my life, try less hard and hopefully to find some more joy in things. I’ve not done badly, but habits truly aren’t easy to shift. I’ve managed to create a lot more shoulds and musts for myself of late. It’s easily done, they sneak up on me. I find when I start to feel more energetic my habit isn’t to do more of what I enjoy, but instead invent new (and usually MUCH less fun) things to do. I fancy I can hear people’s voices criticising me for not doing more, being busier, being more productive, being useful. Now, maybe these voices are only in my head (not really in my head you understand - I had enough of that last week), but they do feel very compelling. Right now though, I want to contradict them. I want to get back into my groove. I want to draw, make more Beanys and hopefully enjoy my life again.
It doesn’t feel easy. Drawing feels very alien again just now. I feel like I’ve lost my connection to it. I sat in McDonald’s treating myself to breakfast and feeling very uncomfortable trying to draw a couple chomping away on their own breakfast. I had the wrong pen with me, my lines felt thin and ugly, nothing looked right. I felt scared. In the end I gave up and drew this thin, scrawny, misshapen bottle of fruit juice instead. But a least I was drawing…
October 3rd, 2005 at 9:59 am
ach ! Michael sounds grim… ((((hugs)))
perhaps a mini break (at home) from shoulds would help?
I was on the phone tonight to a friend who thinks she has ME - she went to a natropath (sp?) who has diagnosed adrenal exhaustion.
October 3rd, 2005 at 11:06 am
Oh - much sympathy.
I’ve been involved in Freshers at the uni and have gone right into the red energy wise - so I’m having the sweats, worse than usual fatigue and insomnia - I have a nice little radio on my bed - lstening to this does, in the end, send me back to sleep - which gives me interesting dreams which must be coloured by what I’m hearing.
Because I have somewhat better phases I find other people have expectations that I’m as OK as the next person. So, when I’m asked to do things and can’t I have to go through the same feeble sounding conversation again and again - feeling unbelieved. This, combined with the must-and-should voice, gets me into all kinds of trouble.
October 3rd, 2005 at 12:42 pm
I wish we lived closer to you Michael, then we’d come over and make you tea and anything else you need. But since we’re stuck here in the 2nd worse place to live in the UK, we’ll just have to support you remotely.
If there’s anything we can do for you, let us know. In the meantime, relax, just sit and watch the wheels go round and round for a while.
October 3rd, 2005 at 5:34 pm
This road less travelled, the one you chose to take, has some potholes along the way, Michael. But it’s a far better road in most other places along its windy, unpredictable way.
You can still draw, as evidenced here, even when you feel shitty, and that’s so much better than not drawing at all.
E-mail me privately if you wish, with details describing shitty & sleepless much more fully, and I’ll gladly make you up some Bach flower remedies, free of charge.
Cheers,
B.
October 3rd, 2005 at 9:39 pm
I know how hard it is to tap into those natural motivations rather than the demands of What People Expect. I’m just here reading and wishing the very best for you.
October 3rd, 2005 at 10:43 pm
I so understand, from personal experience. Tis often said……….-this too shall pass-……..yet hopefully it is also true. This too shall pass. Til then, expression is good however it emerges. I can certainly groan and moan with you, in empathy.
October 20th, 2005 at 6:37 pm
Found your journal through moleskine art.
It is really hard to drive those voices out of your head; to make yourself get up and do something so you feel accomplished as a person in some way. Just know that a lot of people feel that way who have CFS (I do myself, along with FMS, which is why I was attracted to your blog). I think the way you have to look at it is that this is normal for you, and no one else can define who you are. From what I’ve read, you’ve already made great strides.
And know that your everyday activities sound perfectly normal and enjoyable to me.