This is in fact the 4th attempt to gather and publish a few thoughts. Half of it I wrote yesterday morning or in breaks during my work from home. The plan was to add a bit more in the evening, but then I got home quite late from the council meeting and couldn’t be bothered anymore. Let’s see how far I’ll get this time. I didn’t sleep well nor much last night and when I left the office early in the afternoon I told my coworker, that I was going home to nap. And that had been the plan. I even right away changed into my pyjamas.
I made the mistake to sit down on the couch to check my socials, where I then saw my stash of pens and decided to start a proper pen / colour palette for all the new bought stuff, so I know what the line and colour looks like.
After a bit I got hungry and decided to eat a bit and realized it was way too late to lie down for a nap, as it would have completely messed up my sleep cycle. So the plan is to keep going until it’s a reasonable time to go to bed. Like 19:00 – ish. I’m so broke. But it is what it is….
Rumination | My mind has been all over the place these past few days. I know what caused it and while that cause isn’t actually a bad one, it’s still not useful to spend so much time and mental energy going over it all in my mind again and again and forwards and backwards and upside down. It doesn’t seem so bad at first because it isn’t actually worrying about something. But it has too much of an obsessive / intrusive “let’s check and double check that everything is fine with it” impulse, that I realize I need to put a bit of a stop to it. Doing a bit of journalling in the morning instead of starting the day ruminating got me out of my head for a few minutes.
COVID | I know we all want to think it’s over and no big deal anymore. And I’m partially with you on this and I’m glad that I’ve left most of the intense worry and fear over it behind by now. I’ve got a bit of a cold since Monday and as I still have a stash of tests left, which are only valid till early November 2023, I took one each day since. All negative. I probably wouldn’t have taken the fourth one yesterday, if my head didn’t feel worse than before. Not even really bad, just a bit more stuffed than before. I might not quite be over “the worry over it” issue. When I cancelled something on Monday evening, because I didn’t want to expose others to potential COVID, someone else bowed out as well. Because they just had COVID and didn’t feel quite recovered yet. And when I recall how much damages in various parts of the body COVID potentially causes (long-term) I’m feeling fine with being a bit overcautious. I might need to check my stash of masks as well, because I will probably mask up again in lager groups indoors soon.
Work | Same old, same old, sort of. While I’m fine explaining how to do things to my coworkers in a mentoring role, I have a much harder time explaining how I want things to be done in a project coordinator / leader role. Who on earth thought to put me in charge?!?!? Imposter syndrome rears its ugly head again. But… I notice it and I can try to work against that. And while I’m dissecting this here, I think this might also be why I so easily fall into the trap of ‘positive rumination’ (see above). Daydreaming is so much nicer than worrying, right? But both not the best course of action if either activity takes overhand. Hello progress on the mental health front.
Grief | At the moment friends of mine are going through what we went through two years ago: the process of helping a parent through the final stage of their lives. It’s hard! Another friend had to go through that earlier this summer. I don’t like that we have reached the age where we all sooner or later have to say goodbye to our parents. We are not ready! But maybe you never are. In a strange way this all brings back memories from the time two years ago. Things I haven’t thought about in a while, which is probably the normal way of life. You loose a parent. You grief. You move on. But do you really? I have no idea where I’m going with this. Sorry
Zentangle | 50% of the screenshots I took while browsing through social media (especially Instagram / TikTok) used to be of books I might be interested in. These days about 80% of the screenshots are from Zentangling tutorials for inspiration. I also bought a book, which includes many pattern ideas, but that’s often only the one sort of tangle and not the big picture. Let’s see how long this will keep my interest, but at the moment the hype is still going strong. I like the combination of creativity and meditative aspects of drawing the same / similar patterns over and over again. It definitely helps me to slow down or even stop the rush and swirl of thoughts (and worries and such) in my mind. And that’s always a win in my book.
There are a few more thoughts and stuff, but I’m too knackered to think straight. So this has to do for today….
