This morning I did QiGong without a video. Just put on some chill music and went. I have the Eight Brocade practice written down, so I knew what to do in order. It felt really good. I don't know what to make of the chi thing. Life energy, settling it, jostling it, moving your hands to gather it in and release it. But I know the meridians exist...acupuncture is tested clinically to ease pain so there's definitely something to meridians in the body. And there's scientific evidence of our resonance for sure. Everything has a vibration...I think we might describe it as electromagnetism. Is that what Chi is? At any rate, I'm open minded, and just experiencing it, not trying to believe or disbelieve anything about it.
Anyway I'm not sure if I'm going down the spiritual Qigong path, but I'm loving it for meditation and physical health.
Food is okay. I'm still stress eating frequently, but this week I've not been eating large for breakfast. Just a potato or granola bar and some espresso beans with tea. Haven't had any coffee for 12 days and doing just fine with it. My weight went up, so the three lbs I lost from eating zero processed in February are back.
I wanted to talk about illness a bit. I do not have Covid 19, though I'm almost sure I've been exposed but no positive proof of it. But I've been ill, emotionally and mentally. For at least two weeks after moving to work from home, I suffered badly from depression. My brain was foggy and I couldn't focus, wept frequently, stress off the charts, lethargic, lost, battling every day to do the most basic things and really not caring. Too exhausted to care, you know?
During this time, I was wise enough not to try tackling the more difficult tasks at my job. I kept to the mindless stuff mostly, and let the big issues stay on the back burner for a while. One of the biggies was a claims denial that was being disputed. I made a few phone calls the day I received that case, and then set it aside for more than a week. No way could I have dealt with it. NO WAY. Even thinking about it added so much stress that I cried about it.
I set a date that I would tackle it, and on that day I got an email from a higher up about it. Thankfully I felt well enough to do something about it, and did so. But if my superior had pushed it earlier, I might not have been able to. I was NOT WELL ENOUGH. And that's where my thinking has been.
We are one tough society, American Business Culture. Get the job done! Stay busy! Don't rest until it's done! What? We have a scary illness sweeping the globe? We have to move all our stuff home to work, because we might contaminate each other? No one knows if they're positive or not, because lack of testing?
So? How is that stopping you from working?
We very impressively moved an entire company from office buildings to individual homes, INCLUDING the phones, computers, software, security systems, and everything needed to continue working without a blink. Some minor adjustments on the hardware, some routers hooked up, a few people had a one day wait before their systems were running but yeah, in one day we pretty much moved it home. And you can't drum up the mental acuity to ask questions and get answers on a complicated claims issue? What's wrong with you?
But I did not let that motivate me. Sorry, not sorry. I am mentally exhausted and of no use to the member who needs resolution in this matter until my own mental state clears up a bit. You wouldn't ask a person recovering from pneumonia to pick up their entire work load right away.
Of course, there are many who just do it. Health care workers, grocery workers, etc...whether they are emotionally wiped or not, they just went to work and did their jobs, even at the beginning of all this. OMG how difficult this must be for them
I can't even imagine their exhaustion.
(Just to make clear, I wasn't in any kind of trouble for delaying the big project. No one "spoke to me" about it, but each day that I put it off, I wondered if something would come down on me about it. My team and all supervisors have been patient and kind about everything all of us are going through.)
well anyway. I'm feeling better since making the decision to stop paying attention to the news. I got off FB for several days, thinking it would be a couple of weeks, but I missed the good stuff on there, so it only lasted four days. The main point being, I don't need to click into every single article posted by friends, and I don't need to get into arguments with people I disagree with. That stuff is a serious trigger that sets me back badly. With Qigong and not paying attention to the news/arguments I feel myself pulling away from the depression I've been fighting, but it's pretty easy to get in a foul mood if I go to FB and get all in the articles and discussions.
So I'm doing my best to stay away from that stuff, pulling my eating back into the plan, moving my body, going outside for fresh air and sunshine. It's making big and rapid improvements in my emotional/mental state.