Lisa Marie Blair

I got out for another morning walk. The more I get out there the easier and easier it is to find the willpower. It was especially chilly out there and I was very tempted to turn back after half a block but I made it the whole two miles and before I was halfway through the sun was out and I was warmed up. When I got back in I felt really good. Proud, energetic, and optimistic, but things changed pretty fast.

By midmorning I wasn’t feeling so great. There’s a possibility I’m having a flare up my ulcerative colitis symptoms and I’ve been spiralling ever since. I’m not sure what could be causing it, but I have a feeling it’s the increased physical activity. Stress is a triggering factor and exercise I suppose is a kind of stress on the body.

It doesn’t really matter though. The issue is more emotional than physical right now. It took me months and multiple medications to get the last flare under control. I was in pain, and often house bound. I do not want to go through that again. Not to mention each flare seems to be worse than the last. The next flare could mean drastic changes to my medication and care regimen. It could mean hospitalization or surgery.

But I’m getting ahead of myself and doing the exact opposite of what I should be doing right now. I’m stressing myself out over unknowns and giving my immune system all the more reason to attack. So, after tonight, I have to relax. I have to rest, eat right, meditate, and think happy and hopeful thoughts only.

I have to play the wait and see game for a few days and sometimes that can be the hardest thing to do. The second hardest is admitting you need help. Admitting you have to take a step back, again, and that there progress you’ve made had been undone and now your health depends on whether or not you have the strength to face that.

But even that acceptance is a week away at least. For now, I’ll be watchful, caring, and gentle with myself for some time.

This morning was another rough start. I woke up still exhausted, though I don’t know why I should be. I fell asleep before 8:00 last night, a full two hours before I usually do, and I still woke up late and felt so groggy I skipped going on a morning walk with my wife.

A few cups of coffee, a light warm up work out, and the sun coming out from behind the clouds turned my mood around, and just before noon I was ready to venture out for a few errands. We started at the lawn and garden place up the street. Normally I love browsing this place but there were way too many people which made it very hard to maintain six feet of distance and made me so anxious I couldn’t enjoy the trip at all.

The other stores we had to go to were much better but seeing everyone wearing masks and waiting six feet apart in long lines to enter a store and to check out makes me feel like I’m living in a dystopian novel and all I can think about is when or whether the world will ever look the same again. It’s good to get out of the house, but it feels much better, and safer to be back home.

Not much else has been accomplished since. I spent the rest of the day updating post tags and catching up on old articles I’d been meaning to read. Boring things, but at least I tried not to pay too much attention to the TV. I’m alternating between sitting at the kitchen island and sitting at my desk in the “creativity room”. Very soon I’ll be back at work and the days won’t be my own anymore so I figured I better start practicing writing and reading in the evenings again.

This morning was a late one. I try to be out of bed by 6:00 though 7:00 is more typical. Today neither of the alarms roused me and I have no idea how long I would have laid there if my wife’s voice for the other room around 9:00 hadn’t startled me. At least I hit the ground running once I was up.

I went for a long walk this morning. I’m trying to get serious about losing my quarantine weight and getting back to healthier eating habits. These past couple of months have been awful for my will power and motivation, but I’m starting to get a handle on how to fix it. The first thing I need to do is start limiting my options. I’m going to try not to buy so many snacks and to change the ones I do over to healthier options. The other is to have a schedule and tracker going and leverage my reluctance to “break the chain” to get out walking and exercising more.

The afternoon was spent in the “creativity room”. I finally made some real progress getting through the mountain of notes and long hand drafts littering my desk. Half of them were tossed. The ones that were grocery lists or work related. I now have a neat stack of scrap paper to turn into proper blog post, essays, or poems. There was also a scattering of magazine scraps I’ve used in the past for collage art or found poems. I saved all I could find and I plan to remix them into new pieces.

For now though, I’m just enjoying having a little more elbow room to type freely. I’ve spent the last week or more trying to turn the couch or the bed into a workspace and they have been far from conducive to focus.

I’m feeling a little better today. There isn’t as much cleaning to do or projects to complete. There are fewer obligations competing for my time and attention and less guilt weighing me down.

I spent the morning catching up in my to-do list, logbook, and journal documents and setting some goals for the week. I also finished up a week of The Science of Well-Being, though I still need to work through the printouts. I have two new blog post ideas floating around and if I have the time and energy, I’ll get to them this evening but I have a feeling it’s going to have to be something I put off to tomorrow.

I was right. The entire afternoon was a wash. Lunchtime came sooner than I expected and next thing I knew I was in the bed, cozy and losing hours to sleep under the warm sun and the cool Spring breeze.

I want to regret it, but one of the best things about these warm months is the quality of sleep you get. There’s nothing like the speed and depth and duration to which you can sink into sleep when it’s just a little too hot outside. When it gets bad, I have bouts of sleep paralysis and no matter how awful that is I tell myself it’s only because the sleep is so good my body isn’t ready to leave it even if my mind has too.

Today is nowhere near as relaxed as yesterday. My anxiety has returned along with all my bad feelings about how much time I’ve wasted these past weeks and how little I’ve accomplished over my lifetime. Too much time in your own head can cause some pretty dramatic self-esteem swings, it seems.

I think it’s because I have a feeling my little corona-quarantine-staycation is coming to an end and I’m feeling a little panicky for a lot of reasons.

For one, I’m afraid. The novel corona virus hasn’t gone away and I haven’t seen anything that makes me believe we are past the worst of it. I’m dreading having to wear a mask all day too, and to spend so much mental energy of remembering to disinfect surfaces and equipment and not to obsessively worry that I haven’t. I’m also sad. It’s hard to admit because of all the suffering going on all over the world, but I kind of enjoyed this time at home. It felt like time outside of time, something I have been wishing for for a very long time.

Still, it looks like I won’t be working long hours and maybe not even every day. Summer might still be saved after all.