Rest before you are tired

Many years ago work organised it such that some of us could participate in an event called the Massive Murray Paddle. It was a brilliant experience where we divided ourselves in two teams and would paddle - swap - paddle - swap - camp for five days. I joined a day late and refused to be in boat alone but, even so, ended up paddling 100k down the Murray and came out of the experience with lovely-shapely-incredible arms and a lesson:

 drink before you are thirsty, eat before your are hungry, rest before you are tired.

ie, don't wait till you fall off the cliff before you do something about it, because if you fall off the cliff you then have to reset the whole thing, you have to take a break - a proper break - before you can carry on. During the paddle that wasn't an option - you had to get to the end of the distance no matter how thirsty or hungry or tired you were. And the first day, before I figured this out, my arms were ready to fall off!! But then I did figure it out, for the rest of the four days and, I thought, for the rest of my life. 

But it seems to me now that I hadn't. That I had forgotten that. It feels like I have spent the last few months constantly falling off that cliff, I am currently crashed at the bottom of that cliff - wishing that I could go to sleep and/or had coffee connected to me via drip! 

Coincidentally, I was also talking to someone today who had lost 20kgs (!?!) by changing their diet and not eating carbs. When I mentioned that I absolutely have to eat carbs at some point because I am starving they said the same thing, 'oh i just eat before i get really hungry and then i don't get to the stage of craving and having a big meal'   

This advice has also been surfacing for me because starting a new job post-Covid and working from home for this job has been difficult. 

• While recovering from Covid, I get exhausted and find myself just sitting there on the sofa wondering how on earth will anything get done. I have been on high quality supplements but I perhaps need to be on them a bit longer. Got my periods and the iron definitely dropped. The lungs are a whole lot better but I saw someone running today and my lungs just felt miserable rather than inspired!
• It's a new job and I don't know where the stationary is, where the files are, where the documents are!! It's like walking in treacle. 
• Everyone is working from home and it is hard to connect to them, read their body language, anything!! Sometimes I come across to abrupt and sometimes they come across too abrupt!! 

As a background the weather has been miserable. And the apartment is a HUGE mess because I started to rearrange cupboards and in the middle of it decided that actually I need to get a new kitchen bench/dining table island from IKEA and wardrobes for my room and the guest room!! Then, in the middle of that my hot-water system started leaking* into the downstairs neighbour's ceiling! Thankfully the plumbers came and got that sorted but I still have to buy some tiles and get the shelves put back up there. 

Somewhere before this drama started I had a handyman come in and reorganise my balcony (Dashi suggested how to rearrange it and she really knew what she was talking about! So, it is looking a lot cleaner right now - but, BUT, I forgot to get the handyman to put back the doggy door so that is just sitting around my living room adding to the craziness. In case you lost track, this means: 

• stuff that was in the powder-room, (a whole cupboard's worth of stuff)
• stuff that was in the tools cupboards (that will come upstairs when the wardrobe gets done in my bedroom, but that don't have a home at the moment!!) (another whole cupboard's worth of stuff), 
• a painting that randomly dropped off the wall 
• a box of frames that I bought with Mummy and Mummy-Papa were going to help me put on the wall, but they never did, so I have weird lined paper blue-tac-ed to the spot instead!!  
• random stuff from the pantry that doesn't have a home till the island is done (taking up bench space that I already don't have)
• air purifier that has no home and needs to be cleaned anyway that has been sitting there since the bush fires about 2 or 3 years ago! 
• hmm, am i missing anything? 
• oh yes, recycle bin -  because I bought a fold-able laundry basket from ikea and it was a horrible ides - did not fit in the space and probably could cut fingers while trying to empty it in the larger bin. It will get replaced on Friday, I think, because I spent $54 to get a more practical replacement from Office Works, but who knows, really!!
• And coffee capsules that are lying around because I need to take them Nespresso and get rid of them and more importantly because they don't have a home since i have rearranged the space.
• A weird bucket that contained soil from the worm farm but doesn't anymore. 

And that is actually the living room, the room where I live, everyday. I think I am feeling very justified about feeling spaced out during conversations - which I am doing more and more often these days.      

And while I am at it, here is a random list of things that I must do soon:

• Tax return for the last two years
• Call C's pet insurance to get a refund for $180 or about
• Buy tiles for the powder room so that the plumbers can put the powder room back together
• Measure the downstairs living room so that I can connect with IKEA to design an island
• Photograph the downstairs living room (see above)
• Measure the bedroom so I can get the wardrobe designed by IKEA
• Photograph the bedroom (see above)
• Measure the guest room so I can get a wardrobe designed by IKEA
• Photograph the guest room (see above)
• Get rid of rubbish in the living room, vaccum the living room
• Wash clothes in the bed room and put them away in some boxes etc. 
• Buy a graph lined notebook so I can draw the floor plan
• Call Wayne (handyman) at some point so he can assemble the island and the wardrobes. 
• There is a random pack of toilet paper floating about in the bathroom that I have to jump over every morning, put that away. 
• One day wash and change sheets for my bed, because I sleep there with my dog and he rolls in the grass often and jumps on the bed. 
• And other tasks that I cannot remember for the life of me!! 

And you realise these aren't even the most pressing matters. The most pressing matters are staying healthy and actually doing the work I get paid to do. So, the stuff that I am really worried about is:

• Annual reporting to the Commonwealth.
• Including a case-study.
• Doing some kind of exercise and eating well.
  
• Eating enough supplements that I don't collapse before the day is even half done.

That's what I am really worried about. And it has taken me about two or three weeks to write this post, so that is how long I have been carrying all this in my head. Spacing out. Talking without filters.  Because my brain had such little bandwidth left. Putting things off that were urgent. Because I am still recovering from COVID. Doing things that were completely non-urgent, like finishing a library book in a day, like doing second-hand clothes shopping. Because - well, see above. And the weather has been windy and cold. And C sometimes gets super-clingy. And I get lonely and need to first talk to people. 

I wish I could explain to you how good it has been to write this down.   

*The only good thing that came out of that is now I know what a leak looks like and what it takes to get it sorted. Since the tiles in the upstairs bathroom are broken and I have been worrying about that it has been great knowing that!