15 - growingnglowing - the cyclist
July 5th was the last time I battled with and faced my computer for a little writing ‘sesh’. I also was unaware that my domain was expired until a friend told me. Maybe that is a sign I should be on here more often? Clearly, if people are interested, I should be digging for the motivation to write more often. This one will be a ramble.
Honestly, that’s what it has been feeling like though, digging. I am exhausted. Mostly emotionally, which is having a profound impact on me physically as well. I’ve been trying to analyze if I’ve been exhausted from the season change and I’m sinking into a rut, or if I’ve been steamrolling forward since Kingsley was born and not taking enough emotional recuperation time. I could obviously say ‘both’ and that would be valid but that’s just not good enough for me. Typically, I always say to my friends ‘the goal of improving the cycle is for it to become shorter each time it repeats itself’. For clarification and simplification ‘the cycle’ could refer to many different things, but it fits well for most scenarios. An example of the cycle advice could be… letting your room get completely covered in mess until you can’t see the floor and then cleaning it; seeing less and less mess that triggers you to clean each time; cleaning after yourself the first time.
Previously I would be able to acknowledge that I’m in a rut and I would happily let myself brew in it for a while until I really pushed it and hit a ‘rock bottom’ that caused me to change my mindset and behaviours. What I’m finding for myself more recently is that I feel the fight and the urgency to get out of repeating the cycle consistently, and in turn being frustrating that being free of the cycle I’m in isn’t habitual. I’m in the ‘seeing less and less mess that triggers you to clean each time’ part of the analogy. I could also reference a few things for this. One would be my workplace and career. I am consistently frustrated with what I am doing, keep doing it, but struggle to face the uncertainty and decisions of choosing something I would actually enjoy. I also have like 3 major things that I fight with that all COULD be the career. I do want something to spend my time on outside of being a mum. Now I have an extra line of uncertainty with Kingsley in the picture. Which, granted, I made that decision for myself, but in confession, I didn’t ever think we’d be going through the things we are going through now. Bluntly, I don’t think there is a better mother for Kingsley than myself, I do think I am equipped with the emotional strength and maturity as well as the maternal instinct needed to navigate our situation. I just think that occasionally, and naturally, the shock factor of it all does pop up here and there. Circling back, steamrolling forward is definitely my coping mechanism. It’s always just been okay something happens, meh, noted, next thing. Maybe a little objective… it works MOSTLY for me but, I can say that there are probably other things that I should look into. As a little side note, with all the uncertainty and frustration I feel around feeling stagnant, I can say I have confidence in being a mother like nothing else in my life. For a period of time, I wasn’t interested in kids. I was focussed on being adventurous and avoidant from my reality. Learning I was pregnant was grounding. I’ve lassoed myself back in from being bitter and petty just from having this experience, and it’s almost made me feel like ‘myself’ but in a reformed way. I feel like I’m coming back to seeing life to be joyous, romantic, and aspirational, while also having a more rational judgement. Balance. It’s interesting because I then juggle with having this renewed outlook and then see frustration in small habitual errors I am trying to change. So yeah, I’ve been going back and forth between being emotionally exhausted from over analyzing and then extremely happy that I am feeling more ‘like myself’. Like I said, it’s a cycle.
I don’t even know what I just wrote, but I hope you enjoy.