Way back in 2015, I went on a pretty hardcore diet. I was trying to pick up running (long story) and having issues because of how hard it was on my legs (from knees on down), so I thought I’d try to lose some weight and see if running worked better. I took a severe, rather limiting approach that drove a significant lifestyle change I was hoping to maintain (that lasted until I went to a convention, slacked off on the severity of my limitations, and never picked it back up again), and it was all I could think about for a solid month. I had cut down my calorie intake to an incredibly low number and was fighting through the feelings of hunger that plagued me as my appetite slowly shrunk and my body adapted to burning stored fat rather than recently consumed food, so it was kind of at the forefront of my mind whenever I wasn’t focused on something else. It was all I talked about with my friends, in my group chats, and around my D&D group, so much so that I eventually realized it and (unsuccessfully) tried to stop talking about it. This past week of recovering my executive function has been kind of like that. Getting something back that I’ve been missing for so long–years and years–has consumed my mind and attention to the point that I’ve written about it every single day this week. I’m sure I could try to jog my mind away from this topic, but I’m not sure I want to yet since, well, this is a part of my lived experience and very important to me.

I feel like I’m relearning how to manage myself again as this week plays out. So much of my effort over the last year has been me trying to lower friction in my life so I can get the bare minimum done before I’m out of energy. Anything not actively required for my day-to-day existence has slowly gotten cut out of my life until I was either working or resting so I could eventually return to working. Now, as I’m getting energy back and my spoon drawer is refilling not just to where it was a couple years ago but it was before I started counting my spoons nine years ago, I’m running into the problem of having more energy and will to work than I’ve got actual energy and ability to work. I keep exhausting myself every day and staying up too late because I’m so used to feeling tired all the time and pushing through it to keep getting work done, only ending when the stuff I want/need to do is done rather than when I feel like my body is telling me to stop. Which, now that I’ve got the mental energy and willpower for way more stuff, is pushing myself so much further every day than I did when it was a struggle to make myself do anything. I’m not endangering my health or anything like that, but I’m so used to reflexively brushing past my own exhaustion to keep working that now I’m ignoring the relatively small resistance that is my physical exhaustion because I’ve got so much more mental and emotional energy. It’s not great! I need to figure out how to stop doing this despite having my entire life setup around the idea of not thinking about it and doing what I’ve decided to do no matter how I feel about it.

I have to correct my habits. I need to figure out how to shift gears in my brain without causing myself to breakdown from pushing myself too hard or trying to change to quickly. I also need to continue cleaning my apartment and prepare for my friends who are coming to visit this weekend (the weekend following this getting posted). I also need to keep up the pace on the laborious testing on my to-do list at work. I also need to get back to exercising if I can just get enough sleep to stop sleeping through my alarms in the morning. I’ve got so much I want to do now that I’m starting to get the energy to do things again, but all of that is locked behind the unfortunate truth that no antidepressant or new healthy routine is going to fix my burnout and the physical toll pushing myself this hard for this long has taken on my body. There are still no easy fixes for that and while the upcoming four day weekend will probably help with all that a little bit, I know I can’t expect it to truly fix things for me. It’ll hopefully relieve the worst of the burnout, the parts that make Fridays miserable as I force myself to work despite feeling like collapsing into unconcsciousness so I can get some rest is the logical choice to make instead of getting out of bed to go to work. Hopefully the soul-crushing sensation of weariness that strikes every time I think about how I used to be able to get rest days by working from home on occasion will go away so I can deal with my life as it is rather than as I want it to be. There’s no point in wishing for something that’ll never happen, after all.

I’m hoping that by next week (the week this gets posted), once I’ve gotten a weekend to sleep and a chance to spend some time focused inward rather than hecticly trying to relearn how to manage myself while getting through a very busy work week, I’ll have a better grasp on managing my sudden surge in energy and spoons [this has mostly worked but I’m still not sleeping enough yet]. Better to keep my output consistent than live in the range of peaks and valleys that I’ve been in for the last few days. I’m sure I’d certainly feel better if I could manage that. This constant “push until I need to collapse into a chair to rest and then get back to pushing myself hard again the moment I’m not feeling physically incapable of standing up” thing is just not working for me. My boss seems to like it, though. He complimented me on how much work I’m doing and how well I’m covering for my coworker who is out sick, despite me sitting in a chair in the lab as sweat poured down my face and needing to brace myself just perfectly in that chair to stay sitting in an upright position. I’m sure he loves the bursts of high activity he’s been seeing this week since it’s not like he can see the toll it takes on me on account of the whole “masking my true feelings thing” thing I’m constantly doing at work.