Unhinged
When they were in town for my birthday a little over a month ago, my “sisters” and I came up with a plan for me to improve my physical and mental health called The Mitchell Project. The goals are 1. Work out 4-5 times per week. 2. Listen to podcasts. 3. Set intentions/daily affirmations. 4. Experiment with style. 5. BE INTENTIONAL! 6. Time management/Limit screen time. Since this season is about me finding out who I am, my plan was to focus more on the mental health stuff until after New Year's, however, I would still work out to stay healthy. I, unfortunately, ran into some issues.
I have to get to work by 8 and with all the other things that I have to do after work, the only time that I can go to the gym is 5 a.m. I wish I could tell you that after the events of “War Of The Roommates” things got better at my apartment…but that would be a lie. I'm not going to go into too many details because we still haven't really fixed anything, but basically, it's just very stressful and so I've been staying at my parents' house again. That obviously sucks for a lot of reasons, but what is important for this installment is that when I’m not at my apartment I don’t have the motivation to get up that early and work out!
It's okay, I thought to myself, I will just go work out after school and schedule my writing time for after that. The problem is after wrangling children for eight hours straight and working out I was just too drained to do anything else. This led to me having some internalized guilt about not doing enough and on top of that the week of September 19th, was just a particularly hard one at the school. These two things came together and caused a very interesting thing to happen. I’ve known that I have autism for 12 years now, yet in all that time I have never felt as Autistic as I did that week! I don't know something in me just snapped and I was overstimulated all the time.
“Where have you been?” Kid asked when I went to her parent's house last Saturday, September 24th.
“Well, I've just been super stressed and I'm feeling super over-stimulated right now!” I replied.
“Why?” she asked. I explained exactly what was going on. “Mitchie,” Kid explained, “You're trying to work on yourself. I know you know that results won't happen right away…but assuming that changing your lifestyle quickly is also unrealistic. You need to ease into it.”
After we talked a little more, we came up with a workout plan and a new plan for implementing The Mitchell Project. Basically in October, I'm only going to be working out on Saturday and Sunday, to start getting myself in shape. I will be spending the weekdays implementing a schedule and working on the mental health stuff and then in November we will re-evaluate and see the best path forward.
Life can be super stressful. Work, personal relationship drama, and one's own insecurities can all get in the way of reaching a goal. But that's why you have accountability partners! They can help you when you feel like quitting when you feel stressed, or even when you're feeling a bit unhinged!
Have a Greattastic Day and Be Safe
J. Mitchie Ulibarri
No comments:
Post a Comment