Saturday (10/19)

I can’t fall asleep. Finally I drift off around 5 am. I sleep until 9:30 am and then the day begins. I enjoy celebrating Paul and Kiki’s birthday. I spend most of the day flipping back and forth between different tasks – reading, cleaning, sermon preparation, paperwork. My ability to focus has been incredibly poor. Why? I suppose a large part is the stress I am under…but it could also be b/c the last doctor took me off Adderall…

But I don’t mind shifting tasks – as long as I remain productive. It is the overheated brain that I dread – which incapacitates me from accomplishing anything useful. I don’t have much of that today…but I am feeling very anxious and tense and depressed – interspersed with feelings of happiness. I’m not bipolar, but it feels a bit like it today.

I’m doing well with exercise. I’ve been working my way up using the 7 Minute Exercise Routine. It has twelve exercises – right now I’m not trying to make it through all twelve in seven minutes, instead I spend longer on most of them (though I haven’t done a few) – working on building up my muscles to the place where I feel comfortable enough to do all twelve. I like this routine – it is short, it involves a variety of exercises, and the exercises don’t require any equipment but a chair and a wall (and most of them don’t even need that).

I lose hope and go to bed at midnight.

Sunday (10/20)

I sleep through the night without issues. Off to church – which goes well, I think. I have different individuals in the congregation voice different characters in Mark 15-16 and the entire congregation participate as the crowd and soldiers – it is fun and powerful (at least to me!) and then talk about Psalm 22 and its connections with Mark 15-16.

After church I have a meeting, which like usual, I enjoy (except the end, where I have to share on a difficult topic). I feel good about the meeting, b/c I was able to prepare the discussion earlier than usual – and had more time to refine the questions I wanted to ask…though this group is always a “test” group in some senses, since I am almost always writing the material for the first time for this group…

Then it is nap time for almost two hours. My body aches and I take a bath. I have a difficult conversation which both depresses and relieves me. It temporarily lifts my anxiety, but really, the anxiety is just shifting.

I am worn out by the conversation and go to sleep at 10 pm.

Monday (10/21)

I sleep through the night again. The refrigerator is leaking water all over the floor. I spend almost an hour working on it…finally, it stops leaking.

Today I’m going to take a day off. Okay, well maybe I’ll spend some time preparing for Renewal on Wednesday…and doing some office work…and preparing for Nomads…and then its time for Nomads – which goes well. Kyle teaches and I am happy for the opportunity to relax a bit…

I go to sleep at 11:45 pm.

Emotionally, I’m pretty distressed. I feel pain and fear.

Conclusion

I survived another three days. I managed to be fairly productive. I managed not to turn into a mess. At this point I suppose that is a significant accomplishment.

I’m not sure before this year I’ve ever been in a place where I was just surviving – at least not one that lasted anywhere near this long. It is weird, when life moves to a period of survival – where there is no hope for today, only hope for tomorrow – errr, next month, errr…sometime.