This is a story all about how, my life got flipped turned upside down….
How my life was previously (not even that long ago, circa Jan to March 1st,
2021 and as such before that in the midsts of 2020):
In the week; most nights whilst working, I would typically go to bed 3:30am- 4am (which is
admittedly late, this is more 2021 and late 2020, as before that is probably more 2-3am and these things gradually get later) and then wake up about 8:05am and manage the day wonderfully. Always have plenty to do at work, no day is perfect so up and downs, but still have a great solid day at work (maybe I can be last minute out the door most mornings, but nobody's perfect and we've all done it but I’d still manage it and getting there bang on
9am usually) and then in the evenings I’d come in and chill for a bit with whatever the
plan was for that evening… maybe have tea either earlier or nearer like maybe 11pm depending on what
the evening entailed. Then have that hour or two or three after midnight having a little
snack and watching something and maybe chatting online, then usually about 3am I'd start
doing a few things to be getting ready for bed and then to get in bed; it usually
tended to be around 3:30am but sometimes a little later. It wasn’t perfect in
most eyes but for me it worked an absolute treat and was my routine, the weeks then whizzed by beautifully and life was nice… I ate
what I wanted and what I felt I needed to eat for the meals during the week without worries and had a few great snacks in between…
everything seemed to be pretty good.
Then typically at the weekend, because I do tend to worry about lying in when I’ve been up
early every morning (something that harks back to the 2008 issue which can be covered some point in the future); I’d then tend to go to bed at 5am or 6am instead on a Friday night, sometimes just because I fall asleep for a few hours and then wake up about 3am and then maybe watch something for a bit and otherwise just because and then I'd usually be able to just about sleep through till about 10:30- 11am give or take. Sometimes the same on a Sunday,
that’s usually more like going to bed about about 3-4am and then up about 9am for church at 10am, previously 10:45 in normal times. On a Saturday especially
I tend to take my time doing things, like usually having breakfast a bit later than usual and
the same with the other meals, but in a way that is perfectly manageable
without ever getting too late. I do love my Saturday routine and as crazy as it
can seem to some watching it unfold on a Saturday (like parents and Ben), it really has worked for me (so
much so, that it became my day to day routine during the two week isolation
period that started January due to COVID-19. Which became a crazy two weeks but I managed really well in the end due to that routine).
On those days in the week during isolation, I’d only usually have those four hours sleep but still manage to function
perfectly fine for a day of obviously not doing much and not being able to leave the house but the routine would be
similar to that of a Saturday, with everything done a bit later; it was my way of
coping and making sure that I could manage how my day went without worrying too
much, especially since I couldn't go anywhere. Obviously my worry was already massive from being stuck at home all day
every day for two weeks and not able to get back into the work rhythm and routine
that I thrived on that we mentioned earlier, so it was really tricky already.
This Saturday routine as well as the ones for Sunday and other days all tend to stem
from formative and traumatic experiences that I experienced back in October and
September and November of 2008 (hence the 2008 issue) which we can get into as we go along in future blogs maybe like I mentioned before in order to
understand why I do a lot of what I do and why I’m very strict with my routine and
find it hard to make changes and adjustments sometimes and why I worry about
the slightest thing changing in them.
These particular experiences (the 2008 issue) like I say may come up in future blogs if I want to discuss them because they’ll probably explain a whole bunch of reasons
to why I am the way I am and why it is that certain things might have happened recently in the loosest way of explaining that there is. Rather than
being directly responsible maybe (though they are guilty), they’re seemingly part of a truckload of thoughts and
feelings and anxieties that coalesced one day to shove my body right off track from that lovely routine and good feeling.
But that is just how my routine was previously, at least when at its best. So from the ending of isolation on January 19th all the way through to March 1st and
then even before that, roughly from November 1st through to December 20th
just before Christmas. During Christmas and New Year and during isolation is much different of
course due to having different coping routines, plus I did struggle over the Christmas
period due to having to change my routine and with that some anxieties linked once more
to the 2008 issue loomed their head and made it tough. As an example, in this particular case and in quite a few other cases
over the years (2016 and 2017 being biggies) in which the 2008 issue has popped to the front of my mind and done its thing; it
has been a case of approaching a week from Saturday to Friday and not wanting
the events of the 2008 issue to happen in the same way as they did a particular week at the end of
October 2008... that week, whilst to others might be seeming harmless on the surface; but to me they were
tough and the end result was probably the worse that I’ve ever felt, so naturally I’ve never
wanted to get back to that feeling or if I've wondered if it would happen again would it be
even worse. Which technically it could be; seeing as how it seems to be affecting me at the
moment and through all of those years even before anything happened; the power of that
event is seemingly such a thing that you can’t just brush it aside. Some events in life, they re-occur and you
just sigh at them, whereas even the thought of it happening again now is bad enough; even
if you can think to yourself every now and then "Is it really that bad a thing?" but it becomes less about most of the lead up and how that felt and more about that end result of how I
felt at the end). Before November of last year, there was actually a week or two at the end of October
last year that was very similar to October of 2008 in my worries of the similarities. Mainly
because the dates seemed lined up with the dates in 2008, just seemingly one day off in each
case so I felt I had more reason to worry just from the sheer comparison. But in the case of this and in December and in
January I did get through them mainly just because it was a case of tackling that particular
week frame or the weeks head on with the idea that once I got to November in October or in the case
of isolation, it was once I got back to work that things could carry on and they did actually do that and do it really
well. But now something seems to have clicked, and I can’t seemingly seem to find a way back or a
way out of the current way that I feel and trying to figure out how it’s started to affect me. It seems that its beginnings
and roots that started on March 1st and 2nd last week may have big links
to what happened in October last year and of course the 2008 issue.
So that's how we were and a bit of how we got to where we are maybe... in the next blog we'll explore more of how we got to where we are and maybe where it is we are now
Stay classy
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