It’s been a strange August. I think it’s been a bit weird for everyone.
Perhaps I’m a nostalgic millennial, but I miss the simpler days of the school summer holidays. Admittedly, my family rarely went on holidays, but at least it felt like a seasonal pause from school work.
August no longer seems to have that feeling of being a real break. Everything seems to be in constant motion. The chase for productivity is winning out against periodic rest.
My life has seemingly regressed to a similar style of living as I had when I was young. Perhaps it’s my way of searching for creature comforts, even if the comforts weren’t all that comfortable. In my youthful summers, I spent most of my time playing video games feeling pretty isolated from the world. My current situation does feel remarkably similar.
Category: Personal Development
Navigating The World of DIY Diagnosis
I’ve been suffering from constant low-grade nausea. At first, I thought this was a post-heat illness. The recent heatwave hit hard, and I felt an illness coming the day it cooled. But now the symptoms have gone on for numerous days, and I’m starting to doubt my original prognosis.
The result is that it makes my life a misery for several days. I missed several events because I knew my body was not up for it, and managing my eating has been a nightmare. My solution has been to push eating whatever feels easy enough to digest. In that sense, my eating has been replaced to that of a toddler. Fish fingers and oven fries have been the easy, go-to meal.
It’s difficult to have new health issues come up that defy conventional explanation. Going to the doctor seems futile because there is little obvious that can be solved, and within a few weeks it passes anyway. But by that time, some other issue seems to arise.
The fruits of a slow, consistent baseline
Photo by Barnabas Piper on Unsplash I’ve been humbled by how much my physical capacities have nosedived. I’ve had to reel back many of my daily activities. This was from an already diminished level compared to my days pre-burnout. I’ve gone from being able to juggle a full time job, evening activities, writing, travel and […]
The lack of logic in recovery
Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash I’ve often wondered whether I will ever get better again, or whether constant fatigue is my new reality. Logic says that it will. There’s nothing identifiably chronic about my health. Yet logic also dictates that this should have been over by now too. In fact, if everything was dictated by logic, I […]
On living life without a plan
I’ve lived my life always planning ahead.
My whole generation had the idea of planning drilled into us. We needed to always know what we were doing next. Anything to the contrary was a failure. To be standing still was to be sinking in quicksand.
I actually rather liked planning. I ended up building career experience around it. A few years ago, I ended up crafting a GANTT chart with somewhat made-up dates on how to get a legislative bill through the UK Parliament in record time. It was planning that gave everyone a sense of reassurance despite the whole project being a terrible mess.
Yet here I sit without a plan. It’s the antithesis of what I’ve been taught and know.
Avoiding the trap of overanalysis
I’ve been feeling frustrated with my health. Despite building what is a rather aggressive approach through supplements and powders, it’s hard to see much empirical change.
In the meantime, all I can do is interpret the subtler signs. My energy is a bit better, and I have been doing more exercise. My eating is objectively better, and I’m generally improving in sleep.
But at some point, I have to recognise that there are some things that I can’t really know. And to be honest, even if I did, it would probably not change a whole lot anyway.
Playing the game of whac-a-mole in physical recovery
‘Do you ever feel like you’re playing whac-a-mole?’
Someone asked me this once. They explained the situation where you try one thing which only partially solves the problem. This then leads to other issues popping up.
It’s a metaphor that has stuck with me, because it describes my experience in many different domains exceptionally well. When I try one thing, a plethora of new moles seem to pop up. I find myself in a perennial battle of reactivity.
A slow shift into a more peaceful life
It feels like my life is hitting a new equilibrium point. My energy fluctuations feel less chaotic, and basic tasks are no longer feeling like a struggle.
Yesterday, I went to the sea-side on the Belgian coast. I went with a similar group of people to the ones I went with a year ago. It was a nice day, and the ocean waves are always a calming sight.
But what was noticeable was how much calmer I was about life compared to a year ago. Things are certainly not perfect, but I feel like things feel more settled.
One more rotation around the sun
Photo by Valentin Bolder on Unsplash I turned 33 today. For some, birthdays are about celebration, and having a moment to feel special. For others, it elicits a sense of worry, confronting us to the inevitable march of time. My somewhat surprising reaction when the clock struck midnight was a sense of lightness. I think […]
Taking it one step at a time
I’ve been intentionally looking to walk more. Walking more however can sound a little dumb. After all, most of us walk everyday. It’s become so programmed into our living that the idea of intentionally walking just sounds like adding more needless travel into our day.
Yet for me, I’m finding walking one of the most adapted and well-suited forms of exercise I’ve intentionally done.