Wow!!! It has been 3 months since last blogged. I haven't accomplished much in that time. In my last post I talked about Work Life Balance and how I was going to try find it. Well, that really hasn't happened yet.
About a month after my last blog entry, I came very close to losing my job. It was a misunderstanding that got blown out of proportion but with all the crap that has been going down at our plant, Corporate has a no tolerance policy at the slightest hint of impropriety. This resulted in a suspension that sent me into a slight depression. Once again I didn't want to go to work. Life was out of Balance.
After my suspension I ended up working 12-13 hour days for about a week and half, due to Covid restrictions, vacations and leaves of absences. Believe me, tired doesn't even begin to describe how I was doing. During this time I came down with Bronchitis and basically was in an asthma flare for about 3 weeks. Consequently nothing got done outside of work. Not much of my regular job got done either.
I am following a woman (Gina Hartzig) on facebook. She is the "Too Much Woman." She dedicated this month to forgiving herself and letting go of things from her past. She also is giving herself permission to let go of unimportant expectations and things like that. Basically giving herself permission to be who she is and not trying to be everything to everyone. It's about self love. While I am pretty self confident. I've needed to make myself and my family a priority. I am far from perfect and I know it. But I will do what I can do and go from there. I refuse to guilt myself for being human, and I refuse to let others guilt me for saying no.
Part of my Journey for the past 3 months, has been a quest to figure out my exhaustion. It started getting really bad around the time that the doctor put me on an additional diabetes medicine plus added cholesterols and blood pressure medicine. While neither my blood pressure nor Cholesterol were really high, they were higher than they liked for someone with diabetes. All of the new medicines had fatigue listed as a side effect. Despite my concerns, the nurse practitioner at my GP decided it was all in linked to my weight and diet. When called about my test result, I was told to stop eating so much fired food, and fast food and eat more fiber. That was literally what they said were my results. She push my pulmonologist for a sleep study. Which I am fine with but my pulmonologist wasn't. their attitude was they would determine if I needed one when they saw me next. I did insist on a referral to a cardiologist and an endocrinologist. Both of which I got.
The Cardiologist says my heart is strong and not the issue. Endocrinologist says my diabetes is extremely well controlled and no other endocrinological issues are present. My asthma on the other hand is not in control and getting worse. The pulmonologist finally decided that I needed a sleep study. It only took them 4 years. Now I am on a stronger asthma med and my sleep study is a week away. Maybe I will get the help I need and eventually get some decent sleep. Which will hopefully result in more energy.
All of these doctor visits and tests have resulted in some life style changes for me. I am actively trying to loose weight but not just dieting. I am trying to change my eating habits. I am not eating starches right now at the direction of my endocrinologist. Her goal is to get me off diabetes meds. Once I drop 50 pounds, we will start working some starches back in. But she does allow me to take cheat days. They just can't be every week nor complete blow outs. I have chosen to restrict them to special occasions like birthdays and holidays. I have lost about 14 pounds since my appointment. But I have lost 25 pounds in the last 6 months. So I am pretty happy with myself right now.
I've also started working on leaving work after 8 hours. I'm not getting this accomplished all that much but I am doing better than I was. I am managing to leave closer to 9 hours most days. Which is an improvement. I've also decided I can only do so much and am learning to hand things off to my supervisor.
I am still spending too much time on games on my phone. But I am also listening to quilting pod casts in my car while I commute. I'm picking up some good tips and tricks along the way.
I have finally started working on getting my long arm back up and running. I've started straightening the leaders. I think, I need to do a few more rounds of steaming before I will have that completely done. Then I will clean the rails and wheels. Then finally I will clean out the bobbin area. This week I will start oiling the wicks to make sure they are ready to go when I start up the machine again. I am actually getting a little enthused about getting Millie going again.
So where are you on your work life balance? What changes are you finding you need to make to be a better you? What project are you working on?
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