"I'm tired!" I whined, perplexed that this normal every day experience had resulted in complete and total lethargy. Being someone who must understand everything, I felt rising irritation at the irrationality of my listlessness. There seemed to be no reason for me to feel this out of sorts. Yet there I lay, trying to stave off the inner toddler rising to tantrum within me.
Then I did as I always do, I gave in. This is a piece of wisdom I gleaned from many years of facilitating and safe-guarding the worst hissy fits imaginable. I now know, after endlessly trying to circumvent hysterical meltdowns, that it's pointless. One way or another, the emotion is going to catch up with you. I learned to just prepare myself and others for the experience, because that's the only way to learn from it.
So, melt down I did. In my own modified adult way, I let the child within me loose. I cried for a minute or two, whimpering about how profoundly busy I felt. I bellyached about my active lifestyle and how I knew it was irrational for me to actually miss my couch. I tossed and turned, and catastrophized that I hadn't had a moment to myself in years.
As I started to pull my act together, I began to actually listen to my petulant rant, and the logical part of my brain made the connections. I'm an introspective type. Regular readers may have noticed that my thought process often follows an inward train. My own self-exploration comes from down time and zoning out while "doing nothing." For this reason, it is crucial that I provide myself with regular relaxation time. I need to sit in a comfortable space and allow myself to get lost in my own musings. When I don't, I lose myself. Though highly motivated, I forget who I am in my endless drive to the next step.
Thinking this through, I began to realize that my catastrophic thinking wasn't entirely unrealistic. In fact, I'd spent approximately the last 2.5 years working a variety of jobs, moving, attending graduate school, moving again, doing a high stress internship, volunteering, researching and composing a painstaking thesis, and beginning a career. All the while haphazardly making some of the best, most life altering, decisions ever.
In my last couple of years, I forgot the meaning of transition. I jumped from one thing to the next without even taking a beat. In most cases, one thing overlapped with the next for quite some time. I had forgotten to pause, and I definitely didn't stop to think.
So, yeah, I was tired.
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