How can someone who is typically so motivated become so…. Unmotivated? Confused? Well, SAME.
So here’s where I’m at: I’m in a funk (which I’ve talked about before) and it’s getting very frustrating. My last post talked about how I recently lost my job. It’s not the first time, and lately, I’ve found myself comparing my last two jobs and how they ended. It’s taken me a couple of weeks but after coming home from a week of coastal bliss, I’m facing the reality that I knew was waiting. I think I inadvertently put off this feeling by going on vacation almost immediately after being let go from my last job. One of the first things I thought of as I walked out of that place was “how on earth am I going to afford this vacation coming up in a few weeks?!” During those nights in the spa and the mornings drinking coffee on the deck, I knew what was waiting for me when I got back home. Once I got back, it hit me like a ton of bricks.
We got back on Friday and the weekend was full of recovery. On Monday, I found it a bit hard to get out of bed but figured that was normal post-vacation blues. Then Tuesday rolled around and I still felt sluggish, down and unmotivated. This was so strange to me. As I mentioned at the end of my last post, I knew I had to be even more self-aware now than ever before. I had to learn from my years of battling depression and face it head on whenever I sensed it creeping up. I would find myself struggling until 2:00 in the afternoon, then struggling more to even take a shower and face what was left of the day. My car sat stationary for more than a week because I couldn’t even bring myself to go to the coffee shop in town and just be out of the house.
How could I let it get this bad? I recognized the struggle to get out of bed and take basic care of myself as fundamental signs of depression and I refused to fall victim again. I made sure to set goals for myself every day: Prep dinner, complete two levels in my Spanish lessons, wash all of my blankets, finish three chapters in my book, go for a 30-minute walk in the field behind my house - anything that I could strive for and feel a sense of accomplishment when I actually did it. It didn’t have to be something huge, but I tried to complete something each day and add another to the next.
Part of the pain I felt after losing my job at the law firm was the loss of my sense of purpose. I’d been going to an office every weekday from 8:30-5:30 and while I didn’t love what I was doing, I had a reason to get up and go someplace in the morning. Same is true this time around. Just last night, I was chatting with a co-worker from my last job (because they liked me enough to keep me in the group chat and at least some of them still like me) and I told him that I felt like I had been robbed of the same thing this time around.
“So here’s the thing: when I got fired, I wasn’t sad but I was angry. I was angry about what was unjustly being taken from me - my purpose, my income, the six co-workers I actually liked…”
Obviously the last part was a joke and I liked more than six people I worked with, but the rest was true as toast. Part of this feeling was the anger stage in the grief process. Once I recognized that I was basically experiencing grief and that’s where the flirting with depression was coming from, it became easier to manage.
I truly believe that I can overcome this and in the end, it will make me a better person. If I continue to make progress over the next week or so, I’ll see the changes and benefits and it will be so much easier to keep going.
