Woof! Long story alert, so first of all, I do not need advice. It occurs to me that I am isolating myself by being such a no-advice hardass, and in fact I have softened my stance on advice in the sense that I have not believed for a while that you can say "when you say [x] it means [y]" where y is some objectively determined undermeaning, which is how my dad taught me English or perhaps even language full stop. Come on dad, it's not like that. Somebody who problem-solves for you isn't necessarily telling you that you're incompetent, they may actually be trying to tell you in the best way they know how that they see you and care about you; so I'm trying to see the seeing and the caring more. HOWEVER, as regards problem solving, I still find that people skip right to the solution which 😒 that is not good problem solving [this part redacted for swears because I still have hard feelings about this]
Haha I forgot what my story was about. OH RIGHT.
I'm trying to notice what I'm doing when I'm starting to get depressed, is what this story is about. My last dip was midsummer last year, my therapist and I eventually determined that I was overworking myself—i.e., compulsively going into work on Tuesdays, which is my day off—chasing a fantasy of being finished, feeling finished with work. Where I'm never going to be finished with work, and I can always feel whatever I want if I give myself permission.
Work, though, has been objectively busy, yearend is always busy for an admin, and I partly solved this by, well, working ten hour days a little bit at the expense of my workout schedule, and then more lately by going into work on Sundays, which I know, yellow card, but Sundays have the side benefit of getting me out of the gravity well and then it's just a hop skip and a jump to the climbing gym; so I've been climbing on Sundays, with Splatz even, so there is something in it for me. And workwise, Sunday is better than Tuesday because nobody is bothering me. And otherwise, I can do whatever I want like properly aerate and water my plants or prep my tax organizer for my accountant.
I feel like I might be getting over the yearend hump, I just need a quiet minute to corral all the handbook acknowledgments and some stray beneficiary forms and also some last minute discounts that need calculating. So I went into the office this Sunday, potted some cuttings that have been ready for a couple of weeks already, climbed and had lunch with Splatz, impulsively bought and carried a full-length mirror back to the office for my closet, and by then it was already two or three, and the main thing I had to do was my tax organizer. So I did that and by the time I was finished, it was six. So I went home.
You know what I didn't do? I didn't say to myself, PHWOAR!!! TAX PREP DONE!! And, tax prep done in like three hours, which I think is a land speed record for me. I didn't say, Enjoy your accomplishment! I said, crap. I didn't get a single work task done. I said, you know what, I'm going to bird class with Biggie so not climbing on Thursday, so the thing to do is go into work on Tuesday, finish up yearend tasks, and then pop out to climb, what a good idea this is.
I had this idea in my head all Monday, on Mondays after work I go up to the work gym for a run. Friday I had had a great four-mile run, and I was expecting the same:
Lol.
This seems like a side note, but it isn't: it's always been the case that the part of me that gets tired when I run is my arms. When I run outside, I give myself breaks by relaxing my arms now and again. On a treadmill, I hold the handrails but I've never made the connection between that and giving my arms a break; I just always thought of that as "cheating" or, you know, "sucking" and that was how my Monday night run was going in spades. Friday I thought I might get under a 12:00 pace, and here I was barely hanging at 13:30. What the Sam Hill happened between Friday and Monday?
I literally thought, taxes?
Oh, I climbed. Last Sunday was my first climb with Splatz, so we did all the VBs first and just one V0 that I climbed once and then coached her on. Splatz is like me, she's not cowed by not being able to climb a route at first; she tries it again, and again, and again, and again, and again. Which is a recipe for burning out your forearms right quick, not to mention your brain; so this Sunday I suggested that we always alternate so that she could rest in between and also watch. And she did climb that V0 like on her second or third try, like I wasn't expecting it so I wasn't videoing, and then we alternated again and again and again trying to capture it on video, no dice, her hands were cashed. So like I climbed that route, idk, five or seven times versus once last Sunday. I had to ask for help peeling the foil off the new can of Folgers Monday morning, lol.
For whatever reason, I am actually able to access things like, climbing is not a good idea tomorrow. I lost the plot a little bit about if I'm doing something social instead of working out, it is what it is, move on, no need for makeups. In fact I think that my losing the plot about that was a sign that I really lost the plot about Tuesdays and feeling finished if I give myself permission.
Anyway, I woke up this morning and my body has turned into a piece of beef jerky. My body puts the D in DOMS, every time. After I post this, I'm getting in the bath with some epsom salt and maybe the new season of Queer Eye to help me feel my feelings. I have a nub of soda bread thawing on the butcher block, so I can take a picture while I have the light.
