capability

So, I am at the beach, trying to work some healthy habits back into my life. Nothing complicated or difficult really: flossing, exercising (ie walking until my IT band heals), journalling.

I have been here for only 2 days, that is really such a short amount of time I should have had zero trouble completing said tasks. However, this morning while brushing my teeth I just felt that resistance, the ugh maybe I'll just start tomorrow feeling, followed by discouragement at my lack of ability to just barrel through and do the tasks. I mean really, none of those things are hard or particularly painful, I don't know why I would have that sort of reaction. On the beach in the morning, I thought "I should go ahead and take that walk and get it over with," and had the same pair of reactions. Now that was twice in the matter of a couple hours and considering these three habits are only the first of about a thousand I want to incorporate in my life this summer, I was bordering on grumpiness.

After lunch, however, I am not sure what prompted me, but I hopped out the door for my walk without much thought. I got maybe 100 feet from the house and got that rush of accomplishment that comes from setting out and completing a goal.

I don't know what to make of all this; my reaction just seems disproportionate to my accomplishments. I have survived 20 months of nursing in a crazy hospital, and somehow still managed to come out the other side feeling incapable of completing the smallest tasks I set before myself. The only thing I can surmise is that I have for too long (for me at least) dealt with a life that felt completely out of my control- stuck at the mercy of hospital administrators or a sudden, undeniable urge for sleep, that I have lost my sense of capability. I have been thinking a lot about how at work I didn't procrastinate, and so at first I couldn't see how this new revelation fit, but I might have figured it out. At work, I barreled through, got things done, worked my tail off, but never felt like it could make my shift go well, only prevent it from going really horrifically (and even that didn't work out sometimes). I knew that it didn't matter how hard I worked, how nice I was to patients and families even when they drove me nuts, how thoroughly I read through a patient's history, the shift could go bad at any second and I should hold my breath until I'd handed over my phone and clocked out. I learned this too well one morning when at 6:30 am, with only 15 minutes left till giving report, I thought, "You know, it's been a pretty good night." No joke, 5 minutes later I get a call from the monitor tech that my patients heart rate is 27 and lo and behold, I have to call a code.

And at work, yeah I didn't procrastinate, but there were dire consequences keeping me in check. I still prioritized the hell out of my shifts so there was plenty of non-vital stuff that just didn't get done altogether. So I guess some of this makes sense as to why such easy tasks tripped me up. I am just glad I was able to pinpoint it this early in my summer. At home I felt a bit of urgency with all the things I realized I'd been putting off for when I had more brainpower, even though few things in my life now are literally "vital." At work, I was really anxious until I'd finished 9 oclock meds, and only moderately so for the rest of the shift if everything went as planned. So I can see why seeing all the stuff that NEEDED to be done staring me in the face would cause me anxiety and give me the kick in the pants to get to work and not just continue in Denial Land. Here though, no sense of urgency, only a sense of lounging. Which is great until I try to be productive and don't realize that the whole last year my intense anti procrastination, pro barrel through tasks attitude (present only at work, the attitude present at home was sleep til you get a bedsore) was fueled by a more than healthy dose of anxiety.

Luckily now I have passed the phase of "why can't I finish my to do list, even though I no longer follow the procrastination religion?" and now have to figure out how to learn that I can get things done without the threat of a code always looming. I have my fingers crossed that as this week goes on, I can keep up with my new habits and they can reaffirm that I am capable in normal life.

(Relearning who you are after nearly two years in a fog is a weird, weird thing that I would have never anticipated)