Greetings From the Couch

I literally spent the past three days doing nothing but relaxing on the couch while a steady stream of Outlander episodes played on the television. I should be ashamed of my laziness, but, instead, am going to show myself some grace; clearly, I needed an uninterrupted stretch of mental downtime.

I'm struggling, friends.

I am experiencing an emotional roller coaster that has me quite perplexed, vexed, and, if I am being honest, scared. I've never felt this level of self-doubt in my entire life, including the time that I was in the throes of an early-life crisis following my graduation from college, when, the unknown loomed ahead of me in a most terrifying way. Back then, I had the luxury of knowing that I could easily throw myself on the mercy of my parents and they would guide me through. These days, I am the parent who is supposed to be capable of doing the guiding, and, quite frankly, I feel less than qualified to do so.

In between bouts of paralyzing anxiety and debilitating sadness, I am able to remind myself that all this emotion is probably being driven by hormones that are completely out of whack, but, that knowledge brings no comfort while in the moment.

And, considering all of my many, many blessings, it feels completely ridiculous and selfish to indulge myself in this spiral, but, I have no idea how to stop it. Actually, that's a lie; I know how, I just lack the energy to do what needs to be done.

Hence, three days in the supine position on a couch that is rapidly developing a familiarly shaped divot in the cushions.

Ok, so, making a list:

• Start eating better, including breakfast and lunch, which I have been skipping the past two weeks.
• Make myself leave work for at least one outdoor walk each day. The vitamin D will do me good.
• Stop allowing the sheer magnitude of everything that I don't know at New Job to overwhelm me; make lists, prioritize tasks, ask for help when I need it, and remind myself that Rome was not built in a day and no one expects me to have all the answers today.
• Get back in the routine of going to the gym.
• Make an appointment to have my blood work done the minute my new insurance kicks in on the first of March. 
• Give serious thought to going on hormone replacement therapy; the risk of developing cancer may be less scary than the thought of living like this for the rest of my life.
• Keep playing the lottery; if I do end up feeling like this for the rest of my life, at least I could do it on a tropical island.

I have to remind myself that this, too, shall pass. One day, I'll look back at it and I'll understand why it happened, or, at the very least, consider it a learning experience. In the meantime, I'm not lying when I say that I would gladly trade my couch for a hammock.

There is far less of a chance of a hammock developing a divot.