One word to describe today is ‘edgy.’
I feel off. I don’t feel right. In my body, it feels like a tightness in my chest and the tense elevation of my shoulders. I have incorporated more ‘body scans’ as a result of my mindfulness and yoga work. I am slowly, when I remember, getting better at cultivating an awareness of where tension or tightness resides in my body. At various check-ins throughout today, I have noticed these “pressure points.”
Emotionally, I feel like I need to clamp down on my reactions so that I don’t overreact or visibly seem irritated by little things like the dog barking or other humans annoying me. 🙂
The feeling is not comfortable. But I know that I need to own it – discomfort and all – feel it, allow it, investigate it, describe it – which is what I am doing right here.
What has brought this on? Who knows? Probably many things!
I am someone who likes to cross tasks off of lists. But today has been a day for more nebulous, less clearly-defined tasks: researching documentation, reflecting on recommendations, making edits to a paper as part of an ongoing process. And those less clearly delineated tasks are taking place in a less clearly delineated work environment (my kitchen) in a time that is entirely unable to be delineated in light of the global pandemic.
My conversations with adults nearly all revolve (at some point) around speculation about what our future (school, employment, travel, family, social lives) will look like. I am finding it all anxiety-inducing and emotionally exhausting. And to what end? We can’t predict the future. Why do we (me included) spend so much time worrying about it and trying to predict and/or control it?
Deep breath… Long exhale…
Though Grammarly is giving me the little sad-face icon to indicate that my writing tone sounds “gloomy,” I am oddly feeling better. Somehow having this free space to “vent” and share what is stuck in my head at this very moment has freed up some of that tension in my shoulders and tightness in my heart. What better objective could there be, for our writing, than to have a release, gain a better understanding of self, and move toward a more comfortable emotional space?
Win-win-win.