May Review: Old, Cold habits.

Planted: kale, salad mix, cauli and cabbage (again!) Kohlrabi(?!?), and harvested the beetroot! Ermergerhd delicious!

Wrote: lots of learning stories, portfolio reflections, two book chapters, A picture book in Te Reo Māori.

Discovered/ learnt/ wondered: learnt how to play poker using only te reo Māori – “kei hia ngā kāri māu?” (how many cards do you want?) And “kei a Vinnie te ringa toa! Ka mau te wehi!” (Vinnie has the winning hand! Awesome!), how to play many of the songs I’ve learnt from course as well as “This Ukulele” on the uke.

Read: some love letters written to and from people at war, mainly in France, Turkey, and Russia in WWI and II.

Successes: hmmm. Can’t think of anything super spectacular right now.

Struggled with: can I say everything? Reaching step goals, sticking to a food plan, getting in enough exercise, sleep, achieving work commitments, drinking enough water… the list feels endless!

Highlight: my friend’s exhibition at another friend’s gallery, drinking wine for the first time in more than three years, and dinner with loved ones afterwards – all in one night!; Alice starting day care and climbing a tree; one of chicken’s laying eggs again.

Woe betide me! May got harder and harder as the days passed. It was literally the hard slog of the last steps up the steepest part of the hill to get to the top, the halfway point of the journey, before the equal distance back down. That’s right, we are half way through the year, I’m half way through my plan, and May has been Hump Month. May was the Wednesday of my year. And May was the shittiest time in this plan so far.

I don’t even know why this is, not on the face of it. Nothing has really changed in my world, and even May’s goals weren’t that taxing. It was just really, stupidly hard. I feel like I’ve just lost the drive, the motivation to keep on task and keep pushing, the will to make myself and my world brighter. It would just be easier to curl up with a bag of chips, call in sick, and watch TV.

And then I need to remember that, as experience had taught me, I get seasonal depression. I’m not even kidding. Every winter I get lethargic, moody, the food I crave changes to salty or sweet comfort food, and the melancholy I can feel sometimes is overwhelming. I usually get to October when I really start to think, ‘what is wrong with me? Why can’t I just be happy?’ But then the weather warms and the sun comes out and my personality opens up again like a spring flower.

How things are different this year, though, is that I’ve not known pressure like this before. Work and study and side-jobs and serious sleep issues and PARENTING means I spend the majority of my time in some degree of exhaustion, and the only comfort is knowing that pretty much every other parents out there is dealing with their own degree of exhaustion and can totally relate.
But do you know what this pressure and exhaustion do to me? Lethargy. Moodiness. Cravings.

I have seasonal depression before winter has even begun.
As May got colder my urge to hibernate has grown in kind. And I have three months of this ahead of me. This is why May got harder and harder, day by day. Because the change in temperature was so drastic and my relatively fragile sense of self and health has responded accordingly. This is all dawning on me as I write this, as I sit on the couch under our fluffiest blanket, tea nearby, the grey, damp sky playing vista through my window. Mocking me.

I’m scared, for the first time, I’m going to give up. Not fail in my efforts, but that I’m not even going to try. I’m scared I’m going to decide that it takes so much effort and time and energy to do it, so why bother?

I can’t though. I can’t let myself. The good thing about seasonal depression is that there is an end in sight. And what then? When I feel more like myself, how can I look back at my past actions and feel okay about choosing not to do something that is so important to me, simply because I couldn’t be bothered?

Unacceptable.

So. My action plan will be:
Vitamin D suppliments, see if that helps.
Get outside on sunny days and remember that, while this seasonal slump is caused by a hormonal reaction to the environment, I can create other hormonal reactions myself. Bring on the endorphins!
Talk. Talk to someone or to the page. Because seasonal depression is real, Wikipedia said so, and even if it’s not what I feel is real and that’s enough.

June brings me a trip up a fairly decent hill in my town twice a week and, towards the end, a half-way point evaluation. I’m one kilo off my initial goal weight, so I’m planning on making it a good one.

Please let it be a good one!