The Case of the Blown Motivator

Sometimes....I get into a funk. I don't even know what else to call it. I'm not sad and nothing horrible has happened. There isn't something I can point to and say, THAT'S the problem.

I just...don't want to do anything.  

I have no motivation. No energy. No desire to be productive. I could very easily crawl back into bed, pull the blankets over me, and force myself to sleep the entire day away. And the weirdest part is that things that normally wouldn't be a big deal suddenly feel HUGE.

Like today...I need to make a menu for the next two weeks, make a grocery list, and order groceries....and then obviously go pick them up and bring them home.  

That's it!

It's not like I'm being asked to solve world hunger or something! 

But it feels like SO. MUCH. WORK.

Because first I have to figure out what we're going to eat.

Which means......thinking of meals.
Which means......figuring out what ingredients I need.
Which means......checking what I already have.
Which means....making the list.
Which means....finding everything in the app.

Which means choosing substitutions and quantities and deciding whether I really want to pay $6.47 for strawberries that will probably start growing fur seventeen minutes after they enter my house.

All of a sudden, ordering groceries looks like a huge mountain! That's what these funks are like for me.

Things that are normally just things I need to do start feeling like they require energy I simply don't have. I mean, I haven't even touched my planner for two weeks now and I write EVERYTHING in that baby!  

A load of laundry feels exhausting just looking at it. Answering a message feels like another responsibility. Making a decision feels irritating. Someone asking me a simple question feels like they're requesting a 14-page dissertation with citations.

And we won't even go into talking about the guilt...because I know I could do these things. I've been doing these things for years and I know they're not difficult.

So then I start getting aggravated with myself. What is wrong with you?! Why can't you just get up and DO IT?! Why are you sitting here?! You've already wasted half the day?!

And somehow that makes the mountain even bigger!

I think sometimes we assume that if we're not moving, we must be lazy. That was something that I had to unlearn. For a lot of years, I was surrounded by people that carried the idea that a stay-at-home mom was a lazy mom.

Sitting down during the day, taking a nap, resting when there was a floor that could be swept or anything else that could possibly be done? Lazy. Lazy. Lazy.

There was this mentality that you should be working outside the home, period. Pay someone else to take care of your children while you worked, even if your paycheck barely covered the daycare bill. Somehow that counted as working, while staying home and actually raising your own children didn't. And when you live around that long enough, it gets in your head.

I conditioned myself to believe that if I'm sitting down, I should probably be doing something. 

If I'm resting, I'm wasting time.
If I'm tired, I need to push through it.
If I'm not being productive, I'm being lazy. 

And eventually....not doing anything started to feel like being worthless.

I'm still unlearning it.

Thank God I married a man who doesn't reinforce that thinking. He's quite the opposite. I have a husband who actually tells me, "Go sit down. Take a nap. Rest. You don't have to do that right now." Sometimes I need somebody else to give me permission to do what I'm still learning to give myself permission to do.

Rest.

I understand that not every moment of inactivity is laziness. Sometimes I think we're just tired... 

Not "I stayed up too late last night" tired. Like life tired, decision tired, people tired, responsibility tired....thinking tired. Like...the kind of tired that accumulates quietly while you're still functioning. Because you can keep functioning for a long time while you're running low. 

You still show up, take care of people, handle responsibilities, answer questions, make decisions, and still do what needs to be done.

Until one random day you're sitting there staring at a grocery app thinking, What in the world have we been eating for the last 30 some years?

😂

Maybe that's your body's way of saying, Hey. We've been doing a lot. Maybe that's your body's way of saying, This perimenopause is for the birds!

I'm learning that I don't have to turn every low-energy day into a character assessment.
I don't have to be disgusted with myself because I'm not operating at full capacity every single day. AND I also don't have to wait until I feel motivated to move.

Sometimes that's how I have to crawl out of a funk. Not by looking at the whole mountain, because sometimes the WHOLE mountain is exactly why I'm sitting there doing nothing.

Just do one thing, Jill....pick one meal, write down the ingredients, and then pick another.
Sometimes I have to make the thing small enough that my brain stops arguing with me about doing it.

Not with some giant surge of motivation where suddenly I'm reorganizing closets and meal-prepping fourteen pounds of chicken. (Even though it HAS been known to happen spontaneously like that!)

If today is slower than yesterday? That's just fine. I've lived long enough to know that these funks come...and go. I'll get my energy back and get excited about something again.
I'll wake up one morning and suddenly want to clean a cabinet that nobody asked me to clean.

I'll be me again.

But until then, maybe I can stop treating myself like a malfunctioning machine just because I'm running a little slower.

And now...

I suppose I should get to finishing that list because apparently these groceries are NOT going to order themselves. 🙄