Sunday Thoughts
The One with Underlying Stress.
Last week it hit me that I’ve spent some 6 months with baseline stress about one thing or another. It started out innocently enough, me worrying about the train schedule being messed up in January due to bad weather. It then rolled over to worrying about finding appropriate surgeries to complete my clinical cases, then a catastrophic trip to the airport on my way to Brussels, finally Covid-19 and what followed in lockdown. Which was many ups and downs from worrying about getting it myself to passing it on, losing loved friends, doing a years worth of university in 4 weeks ( I do not recommend this but the circumstances didn’t allow an alternative!), worrying about not having enough space in the food world as a woman of colour, re-living the trauma of my racial hate attack from 15 years ago, the anguish of the recent black lives matter events. I can only describe this feeling as the one you have after poor sleep due to prolonged exam period or when you’ve attend a week long family wedding or the feeling after long haul travel. When you’ve had too many cups of caffeinated drinks. You go about life with a feeling of exhaustion and dehydration. I noticed it in the afternoon at work, I could not focus on anything, I felt tired yet wired. The dreaded feeling I used to describe to my patients, I was having a full blown lived experience of that feeling. Then my siblings left for London and Hungary to live the rest of their pandemic life with eased restriction. It all just caught up with me and I came crumbling down. I couldn’t follow my routine, I did very little campaigning for BLM movement, I did not do my tax paperwork as I had promised my accountant, I couldn’t even muster the energy to go on my daily nature walk. I even drive to work! All I could do was to step away and spend the week watching TV and reading Friends fanfiction (it’s my ultimate guilty pleasure as some are really good and I’m actually just a big nerdy Friends fan. Please don’t @me. Thank you). So while my anxiousness is there its eased off to leave just exhaustion and some sugar cravings but for the whole part, a PJ week in front of the TV with old Friends was just what the soul needed. With each passing year and my annual re watch of the Tv show, I always reflect on the phase of life I am compared with the characters who at this point seem like one of my emotions. It has dawned on me that I have now entered the phase of life that the characters were in the final seasons. So while I may not have everything figured out in both my professional and personal lives, things are certainly looking up, just like they did for the beloved gang.
Here is this week’s (rather limited) culture list.
Read: The Island by Ana María Matute. When the Body Says No by Gabor Maté. A reckoning at Conde Nast via The New York Time. Can Someone With A PhD In Furnishings Explain Why Buying A Nice Sofa Is So Hard? via British Vogue.
Watched: Friends Seasons 1-10 DVD edition. Nothing Fancy, Diana Henry via amazon prime.
Listened: Darryl Edwards on Feel Better Live More Podcast.
Done: Made a moodboard.
Connected: Back to Back Friday night FaceTime with my friends ( I highly recommend this as a weekly activity).
“Prescriptions come from the outside,
transformations occurs with. ”