Certain balances are hard to find

[serene]

[posted to my journal and to no_pity]

In theory, I'm all about finding balance in my life (cf. my decision to work at a good part-time job I love, rather than taking "better" offers for full-time work). But then the balance shifts.

Every bad pain day I have makes my available energy and time and mental oomph a moving target. Having three in a row, as I have this weekend, makes me start feeling discouraged and wondering if it'll ever end. But then I'll have a really good week, and I'll feel bullet-proof, and like I could do anything, and I'll start a magazine or something so that all my time is spoken for, well into the future.

The thing to discover is this: How much can I commit to doing in advance, and not risk the crash of having to drop it all if the pain flares up, or if the hormone pills make my legs feel like big slabs of tender meat?

I won't lie and say I'm not discouraged right this moment, but most of the time, I feel pretty good about my choices around this stuff. Most of the time, I let people know that my time and energy are more variable than they used to be, and I have people in my life who get it, and who don't expect me to do more than I can do. But there's so much I *want* to do, and it's hard for me to remember, on a good day, when nothing hurts, that next week, *everything* might hurt, and I might need to spend the whole weekend popping aspirin and sitting in the recliner.

For those of you who deal with varying levels of energy/pain/wellness, what do you do to keep that stuff on a relatively even keel?

Comments

[recessional]

I tend to have this issue with depression, rather than pain, but if I anticipate it to be an ongoing on-again-off-again thing, what I tend to do is keep absolute commitments (things that other people depend on me for, job things, etc) to around about what I can handle if I have a string of really bad days.

But then on top of that, I have things that can be picked up and put down, or that are just for me, or that otherwise aren't time dependent, to pick up and do when I have a string of good days. Short-term projects, that kind of thing.

[axelrod]

Coming at it from a mental illness perspective - and I have 'up' moods, when I get really optimistic and enthusiastic and creative, and then later even if I haven't made a commitment to those new projects I feel so overwhelmed because I want to do them (or want to want to do them, sometimes) but don't feel capable.

I play it by ear, and sometimes I say, "Sorry, I can't do this in the time I said I would" or "I can't do this at all" - either to others or to myself. There's usually a sense of shame, and so sometimes I don't admit that I can't do something in a timely manner. But sometimes I just have to give up, a little bit. I used to force myself on more, driven by fear of failure and will power. But I'm much less afraid now and it's rarely worth it to me to work through emotional pain.

It's frustrating, because I wish I could make commitments (whether to myself or others) and stick to them more reliably. Still, it can be useful for figuring out what really matters to me - when I only have so many spoons, what do I do with them? I'm esp interested now that I'm (nearly) done with college (aside from my thesis). What will I read, what will I write?

I guess my goal isn't to keep things even, because I can't do that (though things should continue leveling out for me). My goal is to learn how to shift my weight as skillfully as I can.

More practically, the big thing for me has been getting extensions for academic work - mostly I just need more time to get things done, because depression is time-consuming. I don't know what your job and activities and commitments outside of work are, but committing to things that aren't time-sensitive whenever possible could be one tactic.

[jeshyr]

I don't have issues with school and work because I can't manage either, so I have more freedom to pick my own tasks than most people but what I do is fairly similar to what recessional posted.

I have three types of things on my "to do" list:

1. Things that have to be done on a certain date. School example: sitting an exam.


2. Things that have a final "must be done by" date but can be done at my own pace as long as they're finished on that date. School example: An assignment.


3. Things that have no date requirement, they're just things I want to do. Currently one of these is "read all the posts and comments in no_pity" for example. If it never gets done there's no problem, but I really want to do it.

I make sure that I know which item is which type, at least in my head. Writing a letter to my Nana is something I do regularly but there's no specific penalty if I don't do it so it's a type 3, whereas writing to the electricity company about my repayments of the bill is definitely a type 2!

Then the trick is that I don't take on type 1 and 2 jobs unless they could be accomplished at my worst health status or they're things that I could re-negotiate or delegate to somebody else if I had to.

As I said, I've got no school or work commitments which helps a lot because "worst health status" for me means no functioning at all and not accomplishing anything except survival. So I try to make all my commitments type 3 commitments - ones that can be done when I can manage them but can also be put off if I can't manage them. So what do I do? Well I look after this community and dw_accessibility, I run other non-DW blogs, I design T-shirts for No Pity City ... they're all things that will be OK if I suddenly have to spend a month being partially or totally non-functional (compared to my "average").

And, actually, I have just spent about 6 weeks being non-functional most of the time so if you take a look at ATMac there's a message there saying "no new posts for a while!" and I've just been doing 5 minute bits and pieces when I can manage them. And the world has failed to end, so I guess I've done an OK job :)