Sitting and considering this week with my desire to find the positive in a negative week. This week was the hardest to move toward seeing success. Anxiety was expansive and draining. Due to my sleep apnea and periodic nights of insomnia that leaves me tired anyway, I skate the edge of exhaustion daily. Anxiety adds one more level of drain. Where do I find the positive in a week of failures?
I am no stranger to failure. Is that failure a personal perception or just fact? If looked at from the lens of ‘normal’ answer is yes. The answer to yes is from the point that I am only working 32 hours a week, maintain the basics of home care, motivating my daughter to finish her classes this last week of school, work on blog posts/T-shirt design, care for pets, and cooking dinner. I did not sort much in my goal of downsizing. So the personal perspective of the ordinary is that I did not achieve an average week. One if asked by others that I would not be embarrassed to review with an outsider. With that thought, I am looking at this week as an utter failure. The choice of being transparent is that perfection is a personal perception and that success is in how you look at life. How do I find success in my muddy pond of perceived failure?
Let’s begin with an acceptance that last week I had a plan for my sleeping medication, and due to events out of my control, I was not able to follow through. Sleep is such a significant component of my energy. Not being able to add more rest impacted my strength—the exhaustion presented by falling asleep at my desk. Additionally, due to lack of sleep or a shift in my hormone levels, my anxiety was worse.
Anxiety is a daily battle of over the top concern that I am letting people down. This week was infinitely worse. My husband chose to do something for me. I thanked him for doing it. Mentally though, I immediately started to prepare an apology that he had to do something that I usually do but had not achieved. Also, developing excuse was the mental drowning of what a failure I am, that my husband works full time, and the primary provider had to take care of a piece of home care because I fell asleep when I got home from work. Well, did that not look pathetic or what? Yeah, anxiety is a deep hole of muck and mire that pulls you down to a level that you feel like you are constantly drowning in failure. So far, this does not get me closer to digging out of the muck and mire and moving to a clean pond of success.
I was dredging the week’s muck and mire, maybe if I looked at what was different. Started Monday well, I had gotten two good nights of sleep and was able to follow my created to-do list to the letter. That always gives me a level of peace. Monday afternoon worked on a box of clutter and finished preparing our home for hot weather and setting up the portable air conditioner. While at work in the evening, the cat injured himself. I stayed up to early am Tuesday, making sure it was a sprain, not a break, and shifting the cat’s favorites to my room where he was away from the dog. Monitoring stretched into Wednesday evening until I had to verify with the vet on Thursday the leg sprained not broken. It was, which is excellent. Okay, so reality check my energy started heading to zero because with monitoring the cat, I did not take any of my evening meds like planned. One negative down and mental muck discarded where it belongs to the trash heap of failure that I am striving not to live.
On the next level of muck, Tuesday and Thursday were full of appointments. It is allowing me not to keep to my daily schedule, even though following the plan is essential to me, feeling triumphant when I accomplish caring for home and family. With being tired and a variety of appointments, the schedule could not be maintained, struggling that this is okay. Life has impasses, and we need to move through them, not let them stop us. Muck of illogical thought is sticking on this subject. The home and family should have care done to them even in times of distraction and exhaustion. With a partial acceptance, it is okay that I did not accomplish all that I wanted to in weekly care—moving on to the final illogical level of anxiety muck.
Next is that even though I made positive remarks and acceptance about my T-shirt designs and being okay with them not selling. Internally I am a liar. I created for the T-shirts, not having any sales, and consumed with reading comments left on Facebook. Reinforced by the fact that I read a post on my page because I liked and followed the store page. One of the individuals on my personal Facebook page commented that she was probably going to stop going on Facebook because of all the ads. My anxiety automatically assumed she was offended by my shirt design about face masks. Both aspects bother me and that this adds to my internal mucky lies of failure. I do have a positive that I did have strength in myself to create the Facebook page and invest in advertising, even though the consequences triggered an anxiety attack. When searching for the precise truth out of all the emotional muck that my mind has created this week?
With great struggle, I can see that there was a success even though my anxiety makes it difficult to understand. Success for me a short time is that another person’s reaction is not about me, and that is okay. No one was hurt. My husband helped around the house, and I thanked him for not acting like he had done something wrong because I was worried that I could not get to it. A creative outlet is just that the store was for creativity, not financial, and with the pandemic worldwide, people are concerned about how to live with less, and getting something not food-related is low on the purchase list. Also, things do not happen immediately. Emotionally this week was a success. This success comes from the perspective that I am not dwelling on my perceived failure of the week, after digging through the muck of illogical anxiety-driven thought. Many of my perceptions directed so negatively. The success is that I can acknowledge this negativity and see the positive and move toward the next week. In moving forward, I can begin fresh and try again. With this situation being repetitive, it may be time to consider returning to researching anxiety at both an education level and scriptural level. Past, neither was a cure-all but allowed me not to be stuck in the muck of my thoughts for weeks just days.
Here is a favorite drawing, I do not know the creator; it has been years since I saw it, and I cut it paste it into a document.
Just a gentle reminder to balance out the protests and life daily struggles this week, I ran across What’s the World Coming to? Song, with video by Home Free in their album Dive Bar Saints. I found it very uplifting, and for me, a beautiful reminder that bad days are okay, we need to learn from them and move forward. Have a great week.
Home Free – What’s the World Coming To? (Official Music Video)
Side note: Due to the protests, May the World keeps moving toward accepting everyone as equals and individuals, including cultural, social, ethnic, financial, political, and belief. I know it is a pipe dream, but it never hurts to pray for equal healing and understanding. My thoughts are with both the peaceful protestors and the law enforcement that are just trying to do the best they can. The protestors to peacefully get their point across and the law enforcement to protect the people. Both sides of the equation have people of violence. May the media strive to show the peaceful and the force and not just push at only the intensity because that raises the ratings. Any death of a civilian unprovoked is wrong, but responding by destroying property not even connected to the actual situation solves nothing. Here in Ohio, many restaurants were damaged and looted, and cars burned. What does that genuinely gain except to reinforce outsiders’ opinion that violence needs to respond with force? Some did respond with a positive response. Not taking a position, because I do not have enough unbiased information, just an opinion based on current and past protests. I support those that strive to peacefully get their point across even if it will not change unless tests can be done to weed out racism in all forms. Then there would be no one because we all have some form of racism in us. Another aspect to maybe pursue is not shaming our law enforcement and acknowledge that their jobs are stressful and they need professional care before they make a harmful decision on a civilian. PTSD I am sure is part of the police force just as it is in the military. Just not something talked about because they are our protectors. Most of all work on fiscal, communication, and educational equality for those impacted by their generational circumstances. Not justifying the wrong being done right now by either side. Just giving a different perspective to the increased violence. Below is a variety of videos from this weekend in the Cleveland, Ohio area. Sorry for so many just such an amazing variety, could have included more.
News 5 Cleveland – Video: Vandals destroy Cleveland’s iconic East 4th Street
News 5 Cleveland – Outbreak of violence takes over peaceful protests across Ohio.
WKYC Channel 3 – Violent protests break out in downtown Cleveland, OH
News 5 Cleveland – Volunteers clean up downtown Cleveland, OH following protest
News 5 Cleveland – Cleveland comes together after a night of unrest to clean the damage, destruction.
Everyone take care during these times of change and hopeful renewal. Stay safe during this time of COVID and US protests or other country protests.
Random Observations 