Taking a Break From Our Regularly Scheduled Posts

I am so sorry - in advance - for deviating from my usual posts. If you know, I am having a bit of a struggle with exhaustion. My brain is not waking up easily. I think this is medication side effects, but I am not used to it and it is frustrating. I am having to rely on audible alarms to wake up which is not my typical situation. I hate being startled awake by a sound - any sound, so I am waking before that sound goes off, but I still have that tension present every morning. I am having to use the alarms because I am sleeping through my light, but only sometimes. I am not consistently waking up when the light clicks on - that time is at 3:50am, if you are interested.

I am struggling to come up with ideas for this blog at the moment. I am not sure what to write about and how to make things work for me. This is something that has been happening more often lately, and I am wondering if I should just take a break from writing for a bit. I hate doing that because I find that this practice is a good one for me, but if things are not working, then why do them?

There are two schools of thought to the paragraph above - one - give up and do something else and two - just keep slogging through it all. I usually go with the second thing because I am bound and determined (translation: STUBBORN!) to do the morning routine that I have set up rather than adjust that routine to something that feels like chaos. At the same time, there is no requirement from life that I do the same things everyday at the same times. I do not have kids to get out the door. I do not have a pet who wants to be fed at the same time right now. (That might be contributing to my exhaustion and malaise.) There is no reason why I have to do anything in the mornings except take showers and ingest my medications. That's all I have to do.

What I like to do is have a couple of hours before I have to go to work to think about things. I like the early morning atmosphere of dark turning into day and the quiet that exists. I like hearing the toads, crickets, and birds singing outside. I enjoy watching the view out of my office window become lighter.

My brain is starting to clear - about an hour and a half after my light turned on and an hour after I was able to drag myself out of bed. If I allow my body to take over, I would have about a half hour to get ready for the day before I leave for work . That would keep my blogging practice out of my morning routine. I would have just enough time to take a shower and then get my water for the day before leaving. That's not a terrible thing, but it is a bit perfunctory. I am not sure that I would be ready to go into my work situations without a bit more "me" time in the mornings, but I can figure it out.

For the near future, I might want to reset my routine a bit more to reflect what is going on in my life. While the medications that I am on are doing a good job of keeping my back pain at bay, I am feeling like I cannot function as well in the early mornings. On Thursdays, the brain fog seems to last until during session times. To further define this situation, I am taking a relatively low dose of this medication. I am hoping that I will be able to maintain my pain on this level of medication so I don't have to increase my dosage. I can't imagine what would happen if I had to take more of this medication.

So, just so you know, I am going to be working on my morning routine. Blogging may or may not be a part of this routine over the next several weeks. I may just move blogging to the afternoons - when my brain is tired from work things rather than from medication side effects. This may change what I am thinking about and what I write. I will try to continue to post things, but I am not sure what I will be talking about in the afternoons versus the mornings.

Time to go take my shower, get my water ready, and head out to work.