Is it possible to be both incredibly overwhelmed, but also enoying the season? I think it is in the fall in the Northeast.
Originally this week, I was supposed to be at She Podcasts Live, but the conference was postponed until June of 2023. But my husband still took the week off so I have a bit more breathing room than I’ve had in a while to hopefully catch up (as I say every week).
CW: DIETING, WEIGHT-LOSS
It’s been about 3 weeks since writing my post about some recent weight gain and my feelings about it and here’s an update.
I got on the scale for the 2nd time since that post and found I was down 4 pounds! After coming off a particularly uncomfortable period that included a lot of water retention, it was a relief to wake up today feeling better and well enough to get on the scale.
After a long March spent grieving and healing from a friend’s passing, on April 1st, I woke up feeling a bit lighter than I had in weeks.
I’ve always loved April. It’s my birthday month and it usually signals the end of our long, cold winter and the beginnings of Spring. It’s only the first week and it’s been such a change to hear birds loudly chirping in the mornings again and little buds start appearing on the gray, bare trees we’ve been staring at for months on our drives.
I didn’t really write that much in March. I found out a few days into the months aththat a good friend had passed away. She was part of a years’-long group text with 6 or 7 friends from my hometown. It’s been absolutely earth shattering for all of us. In the weeks that followed, we saw one another at the funeral and have been staying in touch with one another to check in and support one another as we heal. It hasn’t been easy.
I learned one thing about writing, whether it’s for a blog post, social media post, or in general — don’t write from the pain. It’s messy, it’s raw, it’s reactive, and nine times out of 10, I want to delete it and never show it to the world. I think we all have those parts of ourselves, especially when going through something heartbreaking like losing a friend.
February’s focus was Decluttering — check out my past posts if you missed the start of the challenge and how I turned the challenge into a game 😉
I knew going into it that it wouldn’t be easy and it would most likely stretch into March. I wasn’t wrong. We had high hopes of decluttering and painting my daughter’s room for her birthday, but we underestimated just how tough it would be to do that, given our busy schedules and energy.
This Month's focus has been decluttering and I'm so excited to see folks who follow me on Instagram getting inspired and motivated by my one-task-a-day approach!
When I decided to tackle decluttering as my February Focus, I knew my house was in need of some cleaning and I didn't want to wait until Spring. February seemed like a great month to get going — we're over the holidays and now just trudging along until Spring. We've been in our house for so long and, I'll be honest, it's been incredibly hard to motivate myself to clean during the pandemic. I'm already so exhausted from working, childcare and the regular maintenance of the house that doing anything more is like pulling teeth for me.
This has been a long-time coming. Two years, really.
I’ll be honest, when we went into the pandemic, I was determined to get rid of excess everything to save my energy. Survival Mode felt temporary at that point and things like decluttering became something that turned from a regular thing to something I would do when everything was over and done with.
As you can imagine, that strategy didn’t work out too well. It’s not two years later and what started as small piles have become near-avalanches. It’s nowhere near what you’d see on shows about Hoarding Disorder, but every time I watch those shows, I can see that if I don’t stop and pay attention, those piles-turned-avalanches will meld together to form walls of just STUFF!
I wasn’t expecting to have an easy January, especially doing a challenge that’s really not in my wheelhouse.
Oh sure, I can eat. And you may even be surprised that I took a few semesters of home ec in high school and can follow a recipe. Unlike Moira and David Rose, I actually know what “fold in the cheese” means!
But I really, really don’t like to cook. It’s not my favorite way to spend time. This has been such a weird phenomenon for me because I really do enjoy delicious food with lots of variety. But unless I can find it in the freezer section or it doesn’t involve a whole lot of prep and juggling multiple preparations at once, I’m not interested.
Oof! I didn’t think cooking 7 meals a week would be as tough as it’s turned out to be, but after two weeks, I can say that this challenge has proven to be the hardest I’ve done for blogging purposes. October’s Rocky Horror Roller Show was a challenge that took a lot of time, but I have to say, I loved every second of it. Same with November’s Writing focus. (December’s focus of Relax and Reflect was, obviously, the easiest 😂)
Cooking, though … I really hate cooking, as it turns out.
Every January, I’m tempted to hop on board the health and wellness marketing train along with others starting their New Year’s Resolutions. I can’t help it. It’s like how after being out of school for 13 years, I still want to buy new pencils and notebooks every September. I’m trying to be more conscious of consumerism and how marketing contributes to these waves of interests, but sometimes I like to get swept up in it.
This January, even though I initially wanted to put some focus on my health and re-evaluate some things, instead I decided to focus on something that actually benefited us as a family. My husband, Mark, and I have been letting the pandemic be our excuse for ordering out and getting drive-thru a lot more in the last two years. But with prices rising and our growing boredom with the usual places around us, I had the idea to challenge both me and Mark to cook at home more.
When I picked the words Relax & Reflect for this month’s focus, I had a feeling “Relax” would somehow be harder than it sounds and I was right. By the middle of the month, our whole house was passing around one of the five colds our 4-year-old brought home from school this year and my plan to keep a lot of white space on the calendar turned out for the best.
I wrote about this in the mid-month entry, but one way I found to relax was when I picked up my childhood hobby of making friendship bracelets again. I’ve found it to be incredibly relaxing and a nice way to stim while watching TV or talking with Mark. I get into such a rhythm and it’s so funny how the muscle memory came right back.
There's this internal conflict that hits around this time of year where there are simultaneous feelings of wanting to rest and recharge, but there's also a push to be productive and finish the year strong. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who feels it, right?
Maybe that comes from the end of the year reflection and, as I alluded to in my Monthly Focus post, the disappointment we may feel as we look back at the year and find we didn't accomplish the goals we wanted to.
After last month’s focus on Writing and creating this blog, plus all the other life happenings lately, I really felt like I had no choice but to declare this month’s focus to be Rest and Reflect.
Most Decembers, this mode seems to happen automatically and I've learned to keep the holiday season from getting too overwhelming and overbooked. With the extra stress of my mom’s health being up in the air, plus the ongoing stress of parenting through a pandemic, I know this is as good a season as any to take it easy and not push for a big project.
I took this photo the other day in the hospital while waiting for my mom to get back from an MRI. She had a seizure the last week of November after a mini-stroke/TIA a few weeks earlier. Her health has been up in-the-air and, to be honest, it’s been a really difficult time.
Like last month, I’m still sitting in what I now call my little Kitchen nook to get the sunlight first thing in the morning to help my mental health, but with so much that seems out of my control right now, the overwhelm has meant a few more dark days. I’m using flowery language a bit. I’ve had days where everything is just f*cking terrible and feel like they kick my ass.
I published my blog last night. I'm oddly not nervous at all. It's my corner of the internet I created for me and those who may find my story helpful.
I bought the domain emilyoutloud.com and forwarded it to the site for now. And I put the link on my links page for my bio, though I haven’t announced anything formally yet.
If you ever want to literally hear the gears churning in my head, catch me on a day I’ve just had an amazing idea AND can plan it out and brainstorm it to my heart’s content!
With ADHD, this is actually a specialty of mine. I absolutely love that when I get an idea, sometimes it can hit me with such a force that I can pinpoint so many little details and also I’m able to zoom out and see it from a bird’s eye view to know what needs to get done and how. It’s a beautiful thing I credit my ADHD with being able to do.
It’s November, and my friends who participate in NaNoWriMo (or NaPodPoMo for podcasters!) every year have finally inspired me and I want to get into writing this month.
November seems like the most idyllic time for writing when I picture it in my mind. Cozy sweaters, candlelight, warmth from a fire, or a heating pad in my case. It’s currently 6:51 a.m. and it’s been the first time in I don’t know how long I’ve woken up before my son, who is the loudest alarm clock on the planet.
I took this photo this morning with no makeup, no filter, and with hair that I slept on when it was wet. I’ve been trying to get morning sunlight to keep my mental health on the up-and-up as the days get shorter. I like to make some tea and open the back door to watch the sunrise. It’s actually a nicer habit I find than sitting in front of my HappyLight, which I still love, but gives me a headache some mornings and it’s been hard to remember to use it, honestly.
I’ve been in a weird rut lately.
My son has his second cold this month. Ah, the joys of finally sending him to school, only for his schedule to be even more out of whack with unexpected sick days, on top of living in a pandemic where he has to be cleared by his doctor and multiple COVID tests to be able to return to school. Luckily, his tests came back negative and that’s a relief by itself.
