Once again, I am confronted by the weirdness of the time I write these posts versus the time I post them. It’s a bit different this time, though, since I’m writing this only two days before it goes up. There will be no gap in post coverage, but it has been almost a week since I wrote my last blog post. I respect the break I took because I do feel better rested, but I also don’t want to not have blog posts for six days. Also, I have a lot to say since I did that thing where I escaped with a variety of activities and did a lot of thinking in the background while I kept my fore-mind busy. I’ll skip this upcoming weekend, but I’m going to get a couple extra posts written this week to fill in the gaps I created while I rested.

I thought about writing every day, and even did most of the chores around my place that needed doing (though some of them fell by the wayside since I wound up rescheduling the food and board games event I’d originally planned) and I even managed to avoid ordering food other than the one time I budgeted for. I just never actually wrote anything. I didn’t even do my daily haiku and those take maybe five minutes if I’m not feeling particularly inspired at the time. I even managed daily walks and to ride my exercise bike five out of six days. So it’s not like I completely abdicated my self-care or responsibilities. Just the blog writing parts.

I specifically didn’t schedule much to do for the first few days and enjoyed just swapping between activitis. Even if it meant taking longer to finally finish a game I was playing, it was nice to be doing things because I wanted to, not because I had planned to do them. As someone with moderate to severe depression (depends on the day, tbh), planning activities that I enjoy is frequently the only way I do them when my depression gets bad. It unfortunately sucks some of the fun out of things to be doing something because it is on my personal schedule to be doing it, but some days that’s what I need to do something besides swapping between games every five minutes, starting a dozen new books, and then browsing twitter or imgur until it is finally bedtime.

Which is sort of the side of self-care that doesn’t get much attention, I guess. Resting and treating yourself can be good and something necessary to care for yourself, but most of the time it means washing your dishes, making sure you have clean socks, paying your bills, scheduling doctor’s appointments, calling your ISP to change your service, and making proper healthy meals. It’s not all cozy couch days spent binging netflix while you eat pizza and luxurious bath bombs with a beer or glass of wine to help the warmth and bubbles do their work. In fact, indulging in those things can often become toxic behaviors if you’re letting the rest of your life spiral out of control. Self-care isn’t just indulging yourself, it is quite literally doing the things you must in order to properly take care of yourself. But that stuff doesn’t make for good social media posts and is anathema to the “treat yourself” mentality most claims of self-care is used to justify.

Anyway, I did some real self-care (frequently called “adulting”) and THEN indulged myself in video games, comforting podcasts, and some incredibly tart lemonade. The kind you can only have one glass of each day or else it’ll change the acidity level of your stomach and make your sweat smell lemony fresh. I’m not joking about that last bit. I drank three glasses the first time I mixed up a pitcher using this recipe and was sick for 24 hours and smelled like lemons the entire time. It’s made to be poured over ice and to be drunk slowly as the ice melts, so it’s quite powerful. Makes for a very good gaming drink since it satisfies the sweet association I formed in my teenage years when I mainlined soda at every opportunity, but can’t be drunk too quickly without puckering my entire body.

There was a lot of stuff I wanted to get done this weekend that I didn’t even start working on. That’s life, though. I’ve only got so many hours in a day and I needed to rest. Not sleep rest, either, but mental rest. I needed to unburden myself for a while, enjoy myself, and luxuriate in freedom without neglecting my needs as an adult with responsibilities. Mostly to prove to myself that I could do it. And as much as I’d like to pretend otherwise, posting here isn’t a responsbility. It’s extra. It’s a hobby. I do it for myself when I have the time and the energy, but other things get priority. Maybe things will be different some day, but for now, that’s the way things will be.