Fickle

I changed my mind. It's not stress. It's the other way around. I remembered I was coping quite well, trying to figure out what was wrong, and taking care of myself, but it just wouldn't go away - and that's when I got stressed, upset, even depressed about it. I began to understand why people with chronic illness get depressed.

I usually wake up feeling positive and energetic, listing in my head all the things I want to get done that day, happy and feeling eager to get started. But with this stupid 'illness' I would wake tired, remember, and groan inwardly at the thought of battling it for another day. That's what was so hard.

When the work stress let up, things got better as I had less to worry about, but it has not gone totally gone away - though I feel less dizzy and have not had any major dizzy spells for a month or so.

So that's that, and I still worry about what it is, and wonder if I should go back to the doctor, and wonder if it would go away if I lived somewhere else, and here I am moaning about it. My toe that was broken last year is playing up too, which I think is hilarious  - I am now officially old as I have a body part to moan about.

I'm pretty sure there was something else I felt I needed to write about, but I've had enough of today so oh well, goodnight.

The Universe Provides

I'm feeling very accomplished after a successful day of ticking boxes, just ordinary stuff, but enough to make me feel like supermum and that it would therefore be a good time to re-start the blog.

Good paid work vibe, a bit of decluttering done (while listening to a TED talk so self-education ticked off the list too!), nice healthy delicious dinner finished early, children ferried to various locations in a timely manner, nice mum touches with the special water bottle delivery and tooth fairy letter, and enough laundry done to make me feel like the mountain is being shifted.

And now you're wondering why such a mundane post about housework has such a lofty title.

It was just a thought that came to me last week after two consecutive and nearly identical flashes of serendipity. Two classes which usually had 15 or even over 20 students had six each. This is what teachers are always asking, begging and praying for, of course, but it was just so unexpected - I had no reason to ever believe that either class would be smaller. I couldn't help but think it was the universe throwing me a favour just when I needed my life to be simpler.

Which brought me to my suspicion that part of the reason behind my recent, now-three-month long mystery illness is stress. I also have my suspicions that it's higher blood pressure from my weight gain, and/or allergies, but I think I can throw stress in there too. I asked for that too, in a way.

Now, I'm not professing to believe in 'the secret', but I do think that if you open yourself to opportunities, you notice them more and pick up on them with more confidence and enthusiasm. So it was last April, when I decided I wasn't traveling enough, and therefore needed more money, and therefore needed more jobs. And the jobs came! I know why - the job opportunities were always there, I was just shutting myself off from them because I was busy and needed time and space. So I'd hem and haw when the place I work at asked if could do classes, or shut myself off to privates. I know that previous 'me' would have shied away from the class bequeathed to me by a friend leaving town, whereas after 'opening up' I jumped on it. I started saying 'yes' every single time to extra hours at work, figuring out the childcare details later. And I met potential privates with information and timetables so it would happen.

It reached an apex over the last six months, and especially over the last three, when special lessons on top of relief teaching on top of my usual schedule on top of the at-home schedule (back to 'normal' after Mum left) had me running from here to there with barely space to breathe.

So I found myself fantasising about being sick. In the past, I had, every now and then, when I was *really* tired, idly imagined crashing the car , just lightly, so that I would break a leg and HAVE to stay in hospital for two or four weeks and take an enforced rest from everything. Then I broke my foot, and needless to say, it was much more inconvenient than having a non-broken foot, with paid work and volunteer work and housework and childcare all continuing with the same level of demand as before, just with me incapable of keeping up. So maybe I had switched in my semi-sub-conscious brain to imagining being sick instead, again with that enforced rest. I have to say that even though I was afraid and frustrated by my illness, I *did* appreciate feeling that I was "allowed" to come home and immediately to go bed, or rest for several hours on the sofa, doing nothing. Perhaps I just needed that. Like how I'll have a few more drinks than I know I should because I know that'll make me hungover enough the next day to blithely do nothing all day, giving me the ability to ignore everything that needs to be done in favor of indulging my whims.

And now, finally, I asked for SPACE to think and I have it.

Now I just have to figure out what I am going to ask the universe for next.