Taking My Own Advice

Chauncey and his pet dragon haven’t left my side. This is going to do wonders on his separation anxiety lol.

I started showing COVID symptoms last week and almost a week later I feel like I’m finally beginning to turn a corner. The first few days were very scary — I had a fever that didn’t really break until day 3 or 4, no matter what we did. Once it did, it felt like the biggest win and like I could see the other side. Now, I’m dealing with a lot of congestion, a wet cough, fatigue, and a ton of brain fog.

But, it is not just a platitude when I say, I have a newfound gratitude for good health and being alive.

All that said, my first thought when I started feeling better was still — how can I get back to work?

I started feeling guilty for “dropping the ball” on my 30-day challenge and all the Mental Health Awareness Month content that I’m putting out. I was feeling frazzled thinking how to put out two new podcast episodes with a roll out that did them justice.

Then this morning, as I opened my laptop for the first time in days I realized, I get to decide what I add to my plate and how much of it I can realistically carry this week. And, this week, I can’t carry much. It’s not a judgement on my abilities or a verdict on who I’ll be next week, but for today — I am tired, my body hurts, and I just put my glasses on for the first time in a week and will now be Googling, “can getting COVID change your prescription?”

Years ago, I happened upon a tweet that a writer shared about something she heard Nora Roberts say — I wish I could find the original tweets for this, but I did find a reddit that recapped them if you want to read through their entirety. But, the gist is this, in life we are constantly juggling and dropping balls, some of those balls are made of glass and some are made of plastic. You need to know which are which and which you’re comfortable dropping when. It’s all circumstantial and fluid.

I’m adding a week in June to Mental Health Awareness Month because it’s what my content is about every month anyway. I’m taking this week to recover at the pace my body needs. I’m going to work on the things I need to work on, the glass balls if you will, and know that the plastic ones that we share, you’ll let bounce down and then back up again.

My health is a glass ball. My mental health through my first time getting COVID is a glass ball.

I’m not always great at prioritizing myself, but this felt like a good time to get better at it.

So, this week, I probably won’t be creating any new reels, there’ll be a pause on my 30 day challenge, no new pods will be going live, and if I owe you an email, I’ll still probably owe it to you by end of week.

If I’m making this sound easy, it’s not. I have an 11:45 appointment with my therapist that I’ll cough my way through just to unpack how not easy this actually is.

It’s just necessary. It’s just my glass balls.