In the first few weeks of January I had a cold (not a flu) that still depleted my energy and appetite and even after the respiratory symptoms cleared up after about 2 weeks I have felt draggy. But more, I\u2019ve felt that everything seems too much, a bit overwhelming, a steep hill. There\u2019s been a heavy shaky weight that tempted me strongly to just collapse in my easy chair if not my bed. Gradually I\u2019ve pushed myself to exercise, and once overdid it\u2014mistake\u2014but getting the sense of what\u2019s too much and cutting myself a little slack, allowing myself to recover. And I have been. Each day the weak shakiness shrinks and a greater sense of well being and some appetite returns, first in the evening, then late afternoon, then midday, now the late morning. Getting better. But humbled.<\/p>\n
I asked my wife if feeling that everything is \u201ctoo much\u201d is not completely pathological. She said that lots of folks have this burden\u2014that\u2019s why they stoke themselves up with coffee. Wow. It fits. It\u2019s not depression, though maybe a little\u2014but not psychological; and it\u2019s not classical panic or anxiety, though maybe a little\u2014again, not clearly psychological. I suspect it\u2019s just depleted serotonin. I was tempted to start taking an SRI…but noticed the well-being in the evening and wondered if it might advance into the day\u2014which it has.<\/p>\n
Certainly it\u2019s got me contemplating the varieties and ranges of life, the degrees of aspiration, drive, what is reaching too much. So I\u2019m giving myself permission to notice that thin band that differentiates engaging, vitality, not letting myself \u201cgive in,\u201d and yet not pushing myself either. I have been inclined to push a bit, unconsciously to compensate for an early life of lukewarm reciprocity. But I\u2019m moving into a phase where I\u2019m enjoying only a modest number of involvements\u2014and recognizing that\u2019s enough! I could push myself into more-ness, but differentiating between keeping involved and too much is sharpening. Interesting fine discriminations that I really wasn\u2019t prepared to draw until I\u2019d lived about 8\u00bd decades! Ha ha!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the first few weeks of January I had a cold (not a flu) that still depleted my energy and appetite and even after the respiratory symptoms cleared up after about 2 weeks I have felt draggy. But more, I\u2019ve felt that everything seems too much, a bit overwhelming, a steep hill. There\u2019s been a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autobiographical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=840"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":841,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840\/revisions\/841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}