May 11th - Every Day in May

I think the valuable sleep is catching up to me. Last night I got 8.5 hours of seriously awesome sleep and I woke up today like the energizer bunny and plowed my way through a very efficient work schedule. It felt good to be highly productive.

Health is Physical:

I gave my foot healing time today by waiting until 9:30pm to run. Hahaha! Honestly though, only one rest day taken but 57 hours of time between runs. I would say that is winning and my foot agrees. It did great on a little over 4 mile tester run and I’m stoked to take things in the opposite direction away from worry, and towards healing. I honestly think that’s one of the reasons I have been rarely injured in my athletic career. I am not afraid to take a day off, it doesn’t weird me out in the slightest. If the mojo isn’t there or something is niggling, I just chill out and wait. It’s served me well! Lolli is always up for a run, no matter the time of day.

Health is Mental/Emotional:

I’ve been hesitant to use this as my emotional/mental box checked for the day, but seeing that it’s the only thing I chose to do today, I might as well spill the beans. At the beginning of the year, I found a life hack for my own personal emotional stability that has rocked my world so hard core. It happened totally by chance, but looking back I can see why it worked.

It came about for other reasons. Around the beginning of the year Troy and I had decided that it was time to look into me going on an antidepressant. I was doing really well with my mental health, except when I fell in a hole. The holes were still pretty deep and we were noticing trends, like what set me off (very little things) and how long it took me to get out of the hole (about 3 days), and how often the hole happened (at least 2X a month if not more). But this evidence was pretty anecdotal and since we were going to make an appointment to see my doctor about it, I wanted some concrete statistics to tell her, since I knew she would ask and maybe dosing would have something to do with it, or maybe what drug we selected. I honestly had to idea what the process was like.

We happened to be in San Francisco over New Years when we were discussing this decision and I picked up a journal from the San Francisco Moleskin shop. I even had my name stamped into it all rainbow like too. I was pretty excited about a new journal. It was a day planner style with a page for every day and times down the side of the page (but very small). My goal was to write in it one page every day and keep track of my emotional state, what was bothering me, and what I was up to, that way I had data for my doctor.

A few weeks later I told Troy… hey, I haven’t fallen in a hole… He was like “wow, you haven’t.” I told him I thought the nightly journaling might have something to do with it.

When I hit a month with no hole, I was like “Troy, I think I’m on to something” and we sat down and talked about the fact that it was the first month in 3 years that had been hole-free. It’s really hard to feel like your life is on the right tract when you spend 1/3 of the month crawling out of holes. I always rallied, but it created lots of hicups along the way.

We are knee deep into May and I’m still hole-free. I have had a few days where I felt it coming, one coincided with forgetting to journal for two nights (coincidence, I think not). And a hole may still come, probably will come, but going 4+ months without falling in one has been incredibly lifting, and even gave me the stability to dust off this blog.

When I think back on things, I blogged for the better part of 10 years and it was really only after I stopped blogging that my emotional health started taking a turn for the way worse. My daily journal allows for one page a day of writing where I spew all the mush that’s built up through the day. I hold nothing back, I put it all in there, every irrational thought, pissed off moment, and feeling of uncertainty. I often get that out of the way in 5-10 lines and then I find I spend the rest of the page hoping and dreaming and saying nice words to myself until I hit the end. I always write the weather of the day on the last line. I only do this because there is a little cloud on the last line of the journal and I assume that it’s for the weather. #rulefollower

So, that was my health action for today. But it’s kinda cheating because it’s a healthy action I take every day, and will probably take every day for the rest of my life.

Health is Spiritual:

Back to meditation today. 30 minutes of mindfulness after a busy day thinking about work and being productive. I thought a lot about queso. My friend Jen taught me how to make it with Velveeta when I was in Nashville in March and my meditation was like…. breathing…. queso…. back to the breath…. queso, back to the breath. Why am I thinking about cheese? Breathe Sonja Breathe!!

So, we made queso and ate it and loved every bite. Darn you queso for making my mediation so challenging today.

Insights

Today was a really good day. I really felt deep in my bones today how lucky I am. I thought a lot about all the people who are searching for love and for a partner, and that’s something I’ve never had to worry about. My Boo has been with me through everything since I was 21 years old. And I also thought about all the challenging teenagers out there and how many parents are having such a hard time right now with them, and dear Annie is just blossoming into pure radiant awesome sauce. She’s seriously the bees knees, so fun, so honest, so open, and incredibly kind. And those two things right there make a life great.

Until tomorrow… in good health.

Sonja WieckMay 12, 2020EDIMComment