When I got back from my holiday, I felt ready to take on the world.
I had finished reading Manifest and did some goal setting whilst laying on a sun lounger in Crete. I was feeling inspired and, dare I say, a bit confident.
The serendipitous events that took place after doing this took me by surprise.
Firstly, as I mentioned in my last post, I saw a job posting that I felt was perfect for me. It was a few hours a week, working remotely and involved a topic I’m passionate about. I applied right there and then without giving it a moment’s thought. It wasn’t until later that I realised that I had felt zero panic, nor did I question my ability to do this job, which is my usual train of thought.
Secondly, after having some conversations with a good friend of mine, I decided to start a little mini-project of my own, something I had been thinking about for a while. This then became a bigger project and is now fully underway, again, the self-doubt that usually materialises was nowhere to be seen.
The latest thing that happened was that I received a message on LinkedIn from someone who was looking for a Copywriter with my specific background. I mean it’s basically a job combining my 20+ years experience and what I am doing now, something I have not yet seen in the market.
My mind went back to the part of Manifest where it talks about taking actionable steps towards your manifestations. Did setting myself some clear goals lead me to have the confidence to apply for that job, starting a snowball effect of good things coming to me?
They all happened within the space of 7 days and taking action boosted my confidence further. I was determined to keep up the momentum, so when I got home, got all of my washing done, got back to work and sorted out the sanctuary on one of the hottest days of the year, I felt almost smug about the way I was breezing through and was full of positivity and optimism about life.
Then the inevitable happened. What goes up, must come down and that’s exactly what happened to my mood.
My flurry of enthusiasm withered and died almost as quickly as it arrived. I felt overwhelmed and exhausted. I stomped through my morning walk going through my self-reflection questions in my head in a desperate bid to rescue the remnants of joy, but any joy I managed to scrape back was short-lived.
The first incident, occurred on the Monday after we got back from out holiday. Our neighbour knocked and told us they had a leak and wanted to know if we had one as it was on our joining wall. To cut a long story short, not only did we have a leak, our house was the cause. Fortunately, it could be easily resolved, the husband just needed to get the bits to do the job. No problem.
Problem. The husband then went and sprained his wrist, putting him out of any household chores and jobs. Not good for the bathroom leak and not good for me. I was already feeling overwhelmed with my workload, I had severe imposter syndrome around the potential jobs I had in the pipeline and I now couldn’t even ask the husband to help around the house. I felt hopeless like I was drowning.
I began to stress about work, about money, about the bathroom leak, about the household chores that were piling up all around me. I was exhausted and my anxiety hit an all-time high, another thing to add to my ever-growing list of worries as I couldn’t seem to overcome it.
Then Aunty Flo showed up, which sent my hormones into overdrive and I swayed between rage and tears, on top of the mounting stress and anxiety. I couldn’t seem to stick to doing the self-care I had put in place to help me through this, I was too tired or always thinking my time should be spent doing other things.
After spending an entire Sunday scrolling through TikTok and watching Vanderpump Rules in a ridiculous attempt to distract myself. The self-pity turned into self-loathing. I was not going to have another week of this, I was going to get up in the morning, go for my walk and get back to eating nutritious food.
I had met my friend the week before and had been talking about managing anxiety, and realised it was it’s about time I took my own advice. I was going to fight back.
Monday started off well. I went on my morning walk, did my self-reflection and had a productive work day. Yay. I can do this.
I had a positive therapy session on Tuesday. I left feeling focused, I fought back against the imposter syndrome that had been draining me and started a task I had been putting off but I quickly found myself lost and unsure of how to progress. The anxiety, tiredness and self-doubt started to take over, my head was thumping, and I hadn’t moved from my desk for hours.
I decided to stop for lunch. A nice healthy, simple salad. Which turned into me almost burning my house down. How can a salad possibly be so dangerous? Grilling the chicken and bacon caused flames to flicker in our brand-new oven. At this point, my body was practically vibrating I was traumatised, exhausted and had lost my appetite. I always knew salads were evil.
Sleep was my only respite, I could escape all of my troubles for a few hours during sleep, although I wasn’t getting nearly as much as I needed. The minute I started to stir, my mind was a whir with everything I had to do, all the things that are going on and before I had even left the bed my head felt ready to explode.
My morning walks were helpful, but then I would get home, sit at my desk and the tension would return to my body, I couldn’t focus on the task at hand because I was constantly thinking about the rest of the things I needed to do. I was getting up around 5-6 am and then not sitting down to relax until 8 and even then, I wasn’t really relaxing. I couldn’t wait to get to bed, to escape my brain with some sleep.
Then the third thing happened, well the third thing in the house – They say things come in threes. The handle broke on the kitchen window, the husband managed to get it closed and secure it but it’s out of action, just what you need at the height of summer. We now need new windows. I tell myself it will all be ok. Don’t panic. My brother can do it when he has a spare moment, knowing full well that his diary is jam-packed.
I unsuccessfully try my best not to cry. Things surely have to get better soon, if I could just get a decent night’s sleep, I might be able to think straight.
