I am tired All. The. Time.
I don’t sleep nearly enough.
I don’t eat as well as I should.
And although I average about 7,000 steps a day, I’m not sure “chicken-without-a-head” steps count as real exercise.
So it’s no surprise I am tired.
But I think it’s worth asking: Why? Why am I cutting my sleep short? Why am I opting for the faster meal rather than the better one? Why am I not making time for more focused exercise?
Because there is too much to do and not enough time. The modern world is high-energy, and I am not.
I see people who can do everything I do and more. I don’t know how they manage. Somehow, they have the first 10 things on their to-do lists done while I’m still on number 1.
They are high-energy people. The type that makes me tired just watching them. I am low-energy. I always get things done, but it takes longer. Takes more time. And time is in short supply in today’s world. Hence the shortcuts.
Am I taking on too much? Probably. Most people are in today’s day and age. So perhaps I need to prioritize and prune a bit. And I know my anxiety has been high for a while now. This matters because the way my anxiety works is to make me feel massive fatigue to deter me from engaging in anything.
Sleep deprivation and general overwhelm exacerbate my anxiety, creating a feedback cycle. I need to break the cycle so I can pick up the pace of life a bit.
Even if I do that, I will still never match the high-energy people. But if I can be even a little more productive, I will be happy.
Do you ever feel like your natural energy level doesn’t match the demands of our modern life?
Multi-faceted Fatigue – CoronaLife Day 327
We all know about pandemic fatigue. Most of us have it. For me, it seems almost harder now that the vaccines are here but hard to get. It’s a “so near and yet so far” feeling, and it’s flaring my anxiety.
But January turned out to be a much more difficult month than I expected. My aunt and uncle got COVID, and my uncle died. My husband had a stroke (he is fully recovered, thankfully), and now my sister and brother-in-law have COVID. I’m suffering from crisis fatigue as well as pandemic fatigue. And remote schooling fatigue. And hunting for vaccine fatigue.
I am apparently multi-tasking my fatigue.
At any rate, my brain is not very functional, so I am not going to attempt an in-depth blog post tonight.
Zippy the fish is still alive, so he has lasted with us almost 3 months so far. I have the ammonia in the tank pretty well under control, but now am battling a strange algae we never had before in all the years we’ve had the tank. It’s gray and fuzzy and grows like wildfire. It also makes the tank stink. I think I have tamed it by limiting the tank light use to no more than 6 hours a day (I turn on another light in the room for the fish when it’s off), and turning the bubbler to the lowest level. I read that this algae thrives when the CO2 levels in the water are lower, and I hypothesize that the bubbler (part of a sponge filter system) is putting more O2 into the water and driving the CO2 levels down. I know correlation is not causation, but I didn’t start having the algae issue until after I installed the new sponge filter, so I suspect it is somehow connected.
So that’s been my life lately. Writing has been nowhere for me—I am far too exhausted. I sincerely hope your January has been better!