Let me tell you, I have been moody this week. No, it’s not ‘that time’, but there are times when I get myself caught in a whirlwind of my own thoughts. We’ve had moody weather this week to match, which has been great! I love the cool rainy or overcast days.
I’ve found that once my overthinking gets ramped up, it’s difficult to pump the breaks on them. I can easily stew on a topic for days, thinking about it from every angle. When I’m thinking about more stressful things, this can be a recipe for some mental terrorism.
First, I started seeing a lot of talk about the anniversary of when things began shutting down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many people struggled with all of the changes this brought to their every day lifestyles, but for me, it actually led to a major shift in my mental health. When I started seeing these anniversary posts, I realized that it is highly likely that this new routine I’ve established and love at home is temporary.
I have honestly been convincing myself that it will be forever for several months now to keep myself from worrying about potentially having to navigate my mental health in that state once more. I kept that possibility buried in the back of my mind for some peace. I’m less stressed about this at the end of the week, because there have been no announcements and there’s honestly no use in preemptively worrying myself to death over something undecided.
Another thing on my mind this week has been work-life balance amongst my immediate little family. Not necessarily the schedules we are on, but the prioritizing of our time.
I would love do more fun things as a family and as a couple, but it seems that those things are always the ones that get put on the back burner. It’s just work, eat, sleep, workout, repeat as far as our together activities normally go. And eating together doesn’t even happen all of the time.
I know a lot of people experience this in their lives and it’s ridiculously easy to become complacent in a routine, but that’s not ever how I personally want things to be. I want to have fun and make the most of life with people I care about!
So, when I’m bothered by this I tend to get moody and withdrawn, which certainly doesn’t help matters, but I have a difficult time steering things in the right direction when my mind wanders off track.
I’m feeling much better today, because this is the first Friday I’ve had to myself with nothing to do in quite some time and it’s been nice. I’ve also been extremely productive!
Tonight, some friends are coming over and I’m excited to hang out. It should be a good end to an already good day to kick off my new week.
How are you feeling this week? What do you think about having managed a year in our new pandemic lifestyles? Does your family fall complacent in their routines?
When I started seeing the year anniversary posts of COVID, I started to realize just how normalized I had made things that have not been so normal for most of my life. It made me feel rather sad and distanced from things and people. I’ve had to do this in order to stay mentally sound through it all, but some days I get a reminder of how things used to be and it can be upsetting. This has also caused a routine for our little family, too. Everything is the same everyday, every week. I totally understand where you are coming from and wanting to get out of the rut! Hopefully the upcoming year will bring new, positive experiences for everyone!