One of the hardest things I have been working on with my mental illness, is accepting the fact that some days will be off days and that that is OK!
The first couple of weeks of August have actually been quite intense and I have done a lot – and a lot of big things at that! This has naturally led me to have a few days where getting up seemed impossible. What made this worse, was that I have been beating myself up about not being able to get going for those days.
What I’ve done to combat this is to get out my journal and write down exactly what has been going on. I did it rapid log style and it looked something like this:
- Meeting with recruitment agency – employment checks and informal interview about being on the books – followed by a mooch around town because I could. More walking than I’ve done in a while and hit the movement goals on Google Fit
- Interview – actual formal interview for something totally outside of my comfort zone – Got the job!
- Brunch with the family and then work on parents garden while they’re away with the nephews and sister
- Rest! – took some time for me and worked through weekly review process
- Post office run, food shopping run, dinner out with the family
- 3 medical appointments (the first at 7:30am!), spent the rest of the day with my best friend who was visiting from the States (walked miles! And she bought over Happy Planner goodies for me!)
- paperwork for new job, visit HR to do all pre-employment checks and prove who I am!
- Spent a good 3 hours just doing errands and being out with family members
- Being a dutiful daughter and sharing the drive for my mum to pick up some stuff. Horrible drive though – and then visit three different people
- Drive back with my mum visiting someone else on the way
- Didn’t move!!
- Lots of catch up errands, deep clean one room, communication with Union, post office run, get all the Guide account paperwork up together
- Lunch out with my mum, deep clean another room, DT tasks, planning for the next few weeks with the new job starting
- I crashed! Hard!
Now this is date specific, within this as well, I have met my movement goals from Google Fit nearly everyday and upped the goal as well, driven the best part of 500 miles from just running around doing errands and the trip with my mum, and actually had some rough sleep patterns.
Its only when you take stock like this that you realise that have an off day where you don’t move and where you feel particularly low is actually OK. Its acceptable to have an off day…or two. This is the hardest things I’ve been working on since first seeing the doctor nearly 5 months ago. It is OK to have days that don’t go to plan, where you succumb to the feelings – just as long as its not a regular occurrence.
This is partly why I decided to write this blog post, because getting it out of my head and onto paper and sharing it might help me to further accept it. Especially given the massive hurdle coming next week.
Reading through that you will notice that I have a new job. This is something that at present it filling me with complete terror! It will be five months to the day since I was first signed off work and it is something that is totally new to me. And I am terrified that it is going to hit me really hard and wipe out my ability to do anything else. But it is a regular 9-5, leave it at work, type job. It will be another step towards regular routine which in turn will help my eating routines and sleeping routines.
I’ve talked through all of this with my doctor and husband and both have said that it will hit me hard, but with time it will get easier and its just building up small steps. I’ve planned to death the next four weeks to take this into account and have got myself almost over prepared!
But the thing that I will have to remember more than anything else – I will have some off days and that is absolutely OK!
My Life Planned Out 