The year may have only just begun, but if you’re having trouble getting it into gear, here’s some sage advice…kick it off on a bum note, and you’ll be feeling better in no time.
We’re ankle-deep in 2017, and everyone is all “new year, new me!”. With their shiny, happy blog posts about resolutions and weight loss, and their Word. That’s a thing now. You pick a word to focus on for the year, like “courage” or “bookworm” or “Comrades”.
Or in my case, the word is “Kleenex” or “Netflix” or “crisps”, because those are the only things I can focus on for more than a few minutes.
I’m wrung out, people. Exhausted and tearful and literally arriving 15 minutes early for client meetings so I have time to patch up my make-up in the bathroom from the ugly cry marathons I’ve been having in my car. Damn you, Mix FM and your Pet Shop boys.
Like most working moms, my car is the only safe space to have a good cry. You can’t do it at home because your husband and kids look at you like you’re an unstable, emotional wreck and you can’t cry at the office, because you look like an unstable, emotional wreck. I would cry at the gym but get real, I don’t have time to work on my glutes. (Also, it’s January – treadmills are a scarce as Justin Bieber tickets.)
I know why I feel like this. I know what I did wrong.
I took on too much work. I worked almost every weekend in 2016. Then I tried to do all my team-mates’ jobs for them instead of trusting them to do it themselves. I ate takeaways every lunch. I came home stressed to the gills every night, and yelled at my kids. And then twisted my guts in a knot because I felt guilty. Then I worked right through our December beach holiday.
Every opportunity I had to recharge I binge-watched as many series as humanly possible, instead of turning off the screen and connecting with family and friends.
Work. Stress. Yell. Work some more.
Now it’s January and I’m stretched paper-thin. I’ve lost my joy, and my sense of humour.
That didn’t stop me from posting about my woes on Facebook, though. Facebook: the final frontier of cryptic posts about feelings and stuff. What was amazing was home many people commented that they are feeling the same this January. Brittle and depressed.
The advice I was given, in order: find someone to talk to, write a password-protected blog post, drink wine, get a Vitamin B shot, get more Vitamin D, get away from your screen, have a good night’s sleep, have an orgasm (yes, really), get outside and surround yourself by nature, and go for a run, have a massage, cut out sugar and carbs, unsubscribe from all my newsletters and notifications, fire my high-maintenance clients, declutter my life, and delegate more tasks.
I ignored my reflex to write it all off as “ass-vice”, and managed to: get that Vitamin B shot (which is exactly what you want when you’re depressed – a needle jab in the buttock), switch off my phone and laptop, have a swim, play with the kids, and get in bed by 8pm.
Oh, and I wrote a blog post. Here we go.
It seems to have done the trick.
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