Why Not Taking Care Of Myself Is Lazy And Selfish

I don’t know how to explain how much effort it takes to keep me upright and moving forward this time of year. For a girl who clearly suffers from Seasonal Affective Disorder, Washington State is a rough place to be in the Winter months. I know I should probably change my story about how I fair in the winter months, and some years I do better. However, generally the winters I do well involve quite a bit of travel, and for reasons out of anyone’s control, there has been no travel this winter. So, without elaborating too much, I’ll just say, I’m more than a little sluggish right now.

Self-care is not a luxury right now. It’s a mandate if I want to do more than sit on my bed, in the dark, intermittently crying between episodes of Revenge and Scandal reruns. I sailed through the holidays without a bump in the road, but January brought a whole new set of pressures and deadlines and my self-care routine was devastatingly compromised.

Yesterday started with me hitting the snooze button more times than I will admit in writing. When I finally did roll over and force my eyes open, I did the thing I know is not good for me. Instead of reaching for the remote for Pandora and putting on music, I reached for my phone and got lost in the haze of barely awake in Facebook and CNN, not for a few minutes, but for an hour. One-full-hour.

By the time I got up, I was an hour behind, and rushing to get everyone else ready for the day. This of course not leaving time for me to get ready. So I didn’t eat breakfast, or really get dressed. I worked straight through lunch. At two o’clock I ate an apple and then tried to spend a couple of quality hours with my kid, which was more like forty-five minutes before

I shuffled him to a rest break and fell face first onto the bed to nap. I crashed hard for fifteen minutes before my husband got home. It was the kind of sleep where you wake up and realize you were almost drowning in a pool of drool in your pillow.

I got up from my nap still too tired to cook a proper meal so I suggested going out to pizza, which for the record I know is going always going to give me serious stomach upset. I’ll spare you the details on the stomach upset, but trust me, it’s not pretty. I throw on a sundress because it’s easy and I don’t have to put on a bra, but it’s super cold outside. So, I end up being that woman in a sundress and a parka. To be honest, I did not comb my hair. That was probably a mistake because at some point at the pizza parlour I realize people are looking at my husband like the compassionate man who took the bag lady to get a slice.

We get home too late to spend any quality time as a family. After we get our kid to bed we spend forty-five minutes trying to find something to watch and there isn’t a damn thing on. Regular network TV – nothing. Hulu – nothing. Netflix – nothing. Nothing is on because we have watched every single show ever made.

Finally, we watch a very uplifting rerun of Criminal Minds causing me to fall deep asleep and have gut-wrenching nightmares. The gut-wrenching nightmares went well with the stomach upset. Criminal Minds will do that to you.

And let me be perfectly clear, everything about my day was a choice, or series of choices, over which I had complete control.

Today started with music and not Facebook. I did eat a healthy breakfast and washed it down with ginseng tea instead of Dr. Pepper. I did my pilates. I got everything on my list checked off before two. I ate a quick light lunch, then went for a walk in the sunshine. When I got home I had a wonderful group call before going to the market to get stuff for an incredible vegan dinner shared with friends. After dinner, we had a bath and then did Qigong. Before I go to bed tonight I will have time and energy to do some meditation and alignment work, and spend some time with my husband.

Life is good – and let me be perfectly clear, everything about my day was a choice or series of choices over which I have complete control.

This is a tale of two days. This is all about the choices we all face every day.