In Which I Hang In There
- Devin Romney
- Sep 22, 2020
- 2 min read
Hanging in there is a bit of a misnomer. If you've ever gone rock climbing before, you know the last thing you want to do is stay in one place while maintaining grip. Good climbers know how to take effective breaks, doing it in ways that reduce stress on their body while they plan out their next move or give their arms a rest. Beginner climbers take a break by gripping tightly to the rock they're stuck on while they try to figure out what to do. Meanwhile, their arms get weaker and weaker. Veterans plan. Novices panic.
Life is a lot like rock climbing. Taking a thought-out break to recharge and plan how to tackle obstacles can be very helpful when life is stressful or complicated. Taking a panic break means you come back from the break in the exact same place where you started, except with less time now. I have not yet mastered the art of taking effective breaks, so for now my best strategy is to just muscle through and not take a break at all. Not the best plan, and not necessarily healthy, but it's better than the panic breaks. Panic breaks are the worst because they suck you in. Next thing you know your panic break is now a panic hiatus. Panic is the mind-killer. After all, the base emotion behind panic is fear.
I forgot to charge my moped like a numpty, so I did some Beat Saber today. It's become even more fun as a game now that I have more endurance and strength built up. I'm finding I can do levels I couldn't before. Weight lifting after sucked. Turns out waving your arms around like a Footloose cast member on stimulants makes it harder to pump iron. Who'd'a' thunk? (That's my hilariously bad attempt at putting apostrophes in that.)
I felt down again today, but that's depression for ya. The blog worked! I made myself exercise because I knew I needed to make my blog post. Once I started, it was easy to channel a bit of anger to kick some of those mopey feelings out. It's just hard when I'm in a slump. When I'm in a depressive trough, my body shuts down. I woke up for work exhausted, wasn't very hungry, napped the duration of lunch, napped for another hour or two after work, and was still tired. What we are not going to do, though, is take a break. That would be the death of this. I'm going to keep going until I can learn how to take effective breaks. Until then, we don't stop or we'll be stopping for good.
R,
You have a blog?! Would you be willing to share it with me? I was just telling H the other day that you would be so good at writing a blog. I like your idea of having a scheduled break, I might have to try that out.
Today I learned what a numpty is. I like your rock climbing analogy to taking breaks. I tend to be a panic break-taker as well. The only thing I've found that sometimes works is to make breaks part of the plan. Like for example, Wednesdays are my body rest day. I'll still get up and walk, but no heavy lifting/other exercise, and I still have to write a blog saying that I did exactly that. Confession: doing this doesn't always work for me, but I've had some instances of success with it. But way to keep things up!