I’ve definitely been off the radar for far too long. I haven’t even done my journaling in days because I feel this had to go out first, and I’d been avoiding it a while. I woke up at 6:30 this morning, got out of bed, did a bit of looking stuff up on the computer to start the day… and by 7 a.m. I wanted to get back to bed. I made myself take the dogs out to pee and couldn’t stop yawning.

I eventually just made it back to the couch, had some Reddit story video on, and dozed for 2 hours.

That freaked me out. To have just awakened only to want to go back to bed? But then again, that’s kind of how the trend was going all week (plus a few days, if I think hard enough about it). Hell, my last blog post I was fighting sleep hard and cut it shorter than planned, so this whole month so far has been day after day of my energy being chipped away.

I’m at the point where even my lovely dark-roast sanity sauce has no real effect on me. I could’ve probably skipped a couple of cups this morning and still feel the same, half-dead feeling.

A large part of this has been depression creeping in. I’m anxious over my financial situation and how little progress I’ve made, trying to find jobs that pay better and working on needlepoint projects that I really DON’T need to work on in order to distract myself. I wasted half a day making coasters and finishing up a scarf I still had on a loom and then forced myself to put it down and put it away, at least for a day.

I sometimes have cashier/host shifts at my job, and they’re usually scheduled on the least busy days for that section. But even when they get pretty busy, I have time to create or read. My brain’s been too erratic for reading much lately, so needlepoint has been my activity of choice, my “fidget spinner”, you could say. I have too much to do at home to continue working on that stuff here, so I’m restricting my “yarn time” to those shifts (or when it’s late and I can’t sleep). I also need to find a place to store all these projects I’ve made in the past and started re-making when I felt at my most frustrated and frenzied.

Besides, a better use of my time would be trying to figure out how and when I could sell some of these things, but I also want some “inventory” to put out there, so it’s kind of a weird cycle… and I have no clue what to price these items at. Ugh, fundraising for charity will be hard enough, and now trying to sell things directly? I wish I was more comfortable with this sort of thing.

So, depression has taken it’s toll, but while I’ve tried to get back to my plan to become a vegetarian, anemia has set in and been getting worse for weeks. I’ve been very bad about remembering to take my multivitamin and my iron for years… don’t know why when those are the two main vitamins I need to take, and a good deal of my energy loss can be attributed to malnutrition. I eat very little as it is and my manager shifts provide my big meal of the day (I can eat one meal for free, and I’m not being choosy about the meat, hence not sticking to vegetarianism right now), so it’s got plenty of iron but other micronutrients are pretty lacking. I think the weeks of schedule disruption made me forget when I was taking things because I wasn’t exercising regularly, so my eating was out the window (gotta take my Omegas and others with food or I get bad stomach upset), and because I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t taking those vitamins.

Yeah, vicious bloody cycle right there… not being consistent leading to not eating, leading to malnutrition, and then eating junk to boost the calories, which is ALSO malnutrition. Ugh!

But at least I’ve come to recognize the issue. I know as I transition to a fully vegetarian diet, I’ll need other vitamins and nutrients to boost my system and let me put my energy levels up.

The strangest thing is how much depression has leeched from me these weeks. Yesterday I was fighting sleep and the worst thoughts. Not crying, but definitely numb and feeling all around awful mentally. Then I went to work and I was so busy I didn’t get the chance to think about all the things that were depressing me.

I think work, even though I’m growing to dislike the job because I am so busy but so broke, is a bit of a cure for my depression. Yesterday was nuts and I was getting so much done, I was in the flow-state helping the servers out and bagging food for the cashiers, checking orders, all that stuff. I like mid-shift because even though it’s shorter, it’s constantly busy.

But that’s the trouble… I’m gonna approach burnout if I tackle my depression this way. I had a good morning a few days ago when I just got up and started cleaning my counters and chopping vegetables for the birds. I didn’t contemplate it, I didn’t reason my way out of it and then beat myself up for it because I was “too tired”, I just up and did it without thinking. But the rest of the morning after that was pretty blah, and even now I still have a mess.

When I’m at work or when I’m at the park walking are about the only times I forget my depression. But because of my budget, I can’t drive around to the park every day (and with my work hours, I can’t go each day). Even if I got as little as 2 miles under my feet, it felt like a successful day. I wish I had more morning shifts so right after I could change clothes and go to the park more often. Even with a heat index of 105F, I don’t care; I’m gonna get the sunscreen and glasses (and bandana to protect my head) and go to town with a podcast and earbud in to do some learning.

I have to ramp up my training this coming week and keep it going. But I am recognizing the problem and trying to do something about it. Depression requires some action, and anemia requires more attention. I’m taking steps to whoop those ailments and keep them down once again. I’ll have some down-time at work today so I can write down cleaning plans for the rest of the month by breaking it down to easier steps. If I’m lucky, I’ll be organized enough to have a garage sale in early September.

Getting rid of stuff I don’t need and easing the financial pinch at the same time will DEFINITELY help that depression (hee hee).