Mind and body

“Woe is me” isn’t very fun to read, nor is it very useful to anyone. Since “woe is me” was the theme of yesterday, I did not post. In hindsight it makes sense that I had to have a day to emotionally react to the events of last week. I was too busy to react at the time. But the emotional reactions aren’t useful since I’ve already formed a plan for going forward. Instead they were a thing to get out of the way.

The mood of the day was also not helped by the illness I’ve picked up. It makes my heart race and my limbs feel weak even when I’m sitting still. The feeling is similar to post-adrenaline-rush. It took me awhile to figure out that the sensation was an illness because the swollen lymph nodes and creeping headache are much more subtle signs to pick up. The clincher though is that eating vitamin C restores me to nearly normal. (Wish I’d figured that out yesterday instead of this morning.) Unfortunately the racing-heart and weak-limbs feel very similar to fear reactions. In fact for much of yesterday my back brain kept deciding that since my body felt afraid, it should provide a reason for the fear. So it kept throwing “reasons to be afraid of the future” into my forebrain. It took me awhile to see that loop and break it.

Considering the amount of stress I was under last week, I should not be surprised that I’m sick. Hopefully it will be a short illness. I’ve got things to do and I’m really tired of reminding myself that I’m not really scared. I’m just sick. I will get better. I want to tackle the things that are coming with joy at the challenges, not fear of failure.