Most people know the Friends theme about being “always stuck in second gear” when it hasn’t been their day, their week, their month or even their year…and while it’s a cute lyric and metaphor, I mention it only to the extent that it’s adjacent to what I’m feeling.

When we got sick in the Dominican, our last day was a bit of a crunch. Andrea had to go to Punta Cana to a private hospital for tests and xrays; Jacob was visiting the toilet frequently to throw up; and although I was in the best shape out of the three of us, that is a low bar at best if I’m winning. We had to check out of the hotel early, get Andrea to the private hospital, get her back to the hotel, get a prescription, get some food in us before leaving the resort, get to the airport, get checked in, get to the gate, get on the plane, get out of the airport upon arrival, and generally get us all home in Ottawa at 4:00 a.m. when all any one of us wanted to do was just curl up into a ball and ignore the world.

Curling up wasn’t an option for any of the stages, so I went into what I often call crunch or crisis mode. You could view it a bit like fight / flight / freeze, but for me I prefer the metaphor of just “crisis mode”. I become a very linear thinker — problem? Solution! Problem? Solution! And so on. I don’t want to debate food options, I don’t want to discuss what to drink, I don’t want to discuss where to sit. Here’s food, here’s drink, here’s a seat, done.

I don’t go into this mode very often as I prefer to analyse situations more, be more flexible if I can, but crisis mode is my default when faced with any form of emotional drama or physical trauma. Get me through this, get us safe, and then unclench.

Except when we got home, there was no relaxation happening. Jacob was sick for more than 2 weeks, while simultaneously trying to get his schoolwork done for the end of the semester. Andrea rarely misses work, yet pneumonia let her go back a bit but then has been off again. I missed the first week, worked through the other weeks, but there ain’t much “thinking” and “analysing” going on. I’m basically still in “Problem? Solution!” mode, I think.

A chance to relax

I confess that I knew I wasn’t fully back to normal, but I thought it was mainly physical. I’ve had the residual cough, extra phlegm, and I’m tired every afternoon. I just run out of energy. But, as I said, with Andrea and Jacob still sick in there, I assumed it was just that still for me too.

But something happened this week to shake me out of my assumptions.

We had bought tickets for the three of us to go to the NAC to see a “Cinematic Sax” experience, with the NAC Orchestra plus Branford Marsalis doing solos on sax. It isn’t a “must-see” for us or anything, but it’s nice to go and see something different each year. And it makes for an easy Christmas present aka an “experience” not a “gift”.

Except I didn’t think about it enough…it was just at the start of Jacob’s exam period, so I should have figured that out when I first looked at the tickets. It was mostly okay for timing, as it turned out, but still, a late night before his potential first exam. Not a good combo. And he was still behind on schoolwork, playing catchup. He maybe could have gone, but it wasn’t a good use of his time, and still sick, all things being considered.

Andrea was still really sick, so she was out of the running early. Often, if Jacob and I can’t go, Andrea has a big enough social network to find other interested people to join. This time, she was out too.

We offered the tickets up to various people, some interested but unavailable either on short notice or the night in particular. But here’s where something interesting happened.

Our friend Stephan (the one who introduced Andrea and I) called and said he wanted to go, just for one ticket, and did I still want to go even if Andrea and Jacob couldn’t? My answer was almost instantly, unequivocally, no.

But wait a minute…why? I actually wasn’t really that sick anymore. I could easily have gone. But my whole body said “NO!” quite loudly. Physically, emotionally, intellectually, existentially, NO.

The response was so strong, it was clear it wasn’t an analytical decision, but an autonomic one. My body, my “being” was saying no, not my head.

Huh. That’s weird, I thought.

Unpacking my reaction

Over the course of the night, I thought more about it. So, as I’ve mentioned in other posts, I don’t have a large or active social network, never have. I know lots of people but I don’t necessarily “do” things with them on my own. It’s a fear for retirement, how do I replace my social interactions at work so I don’t become an energy vampire towards Andrea and Jacob.

Stephan is one of my favourite people in the world. I could hang with him anytime, anywhere, all good. I would like to spend more time with him than I do, I always enjoy our get-togethers. Yet here I was saying no.

Cuz I was sick, right? Well, no, not exactly. I realized that if it was just, “hey go for a coffee or dinner”, I would have said yes. So I *WAS* able to consider going OUT, without worrying about making him or others sick. But my risk assessment for the NAC, in a big giant hall with thousands of people at the height of flu season in Ottawa, was “hell no”. Potential risk? Hard no. Immediate. Like I was still in crunch or crisis mode. But I couldn’t be, right? That was weeks ago. What else was going on? I started doing my mental “sore tooth” test of other things that I had reacted to lately too.

I’m really worried about Andrea. She has a REALLY bad cough, and she’s missed most of the last three weeks. That is NOT usual for her, and no real signs of progress. It looked good early on when she was on antibiotics, but now, not so much. And I’m not as tolerant of her passive nature on this. Go to the hospital, call so and so, do this, try this, what’s going on, what have you taken, etc. Far less understanding…Problem? What solution are you doing, have you tried this? I’m not comforting, I’m in problem-solving mode, what do you need me to get at the pharmacist?

Jacob has been neck-deep in school crap, trying to get himself to the end of the semester. And while I try to be understanding, my patience on some aspects has waned too. I’m not giving him options, or suggesting things, I’m dictating, “You will tell me what you have left to do for each of your 4 classes, and when, and we aka I will make up your priority list in which order you should focus on which things, here’s your list.” Problem? Solution. He clearly needs help, both Andrea and he agree too, but I’m not helping him figure it out, I don’t have time for that, nor the energy. Decision made, moving on.

At work, I’m mostly focusing on today’s tasks…problems? Solutions! Looking back, it has been more focused on transactions. What do you need? What do they need? What do I need? Who’s doing X? You want it to go that way? Umm, okay, let’s do that. Just to do it and get it off the list. Is it the best solution? I don’t know, I don’t care, I want a solution, not a debate. Not quite being an asshat, but I have been less open, less collaborative, more transactional. An opportunity came up recently for March, a potential trip to Nunavut. Now, Nunavut is on my bucket list, absolutely. And before I leave this job, I want to go to all three of the Territories if I can. So here’s the first opportunity. And the mental load of taking on planning a trip in March was NOT happening. I said no immediately and left it for others to pick up the challenge.

At home, I really haven’t cared much about food. I don’t want to debate option x or y or z, and Andrea has somehow been still doing most of the mental load for cooking without dropping, but I really have had no views. I feel like I’m still at the resort — I’ll eat what’s available, I don’t care too much about quality, so long as edible. I’m looking for fuel and yet I’m finding almost everything bland and unappetizing. Which could suggest part of what we were sick with was perhaps COVID that messed up my taste buds. But regardless, I have been less interested in food options and more interested in consumption of some sort.

For reading, I’ve gone sideways. I’m not really reading. I read a TON on vacation; I do go up and down; there’s stuff I want to read now; but I’m not actually interested enough to do it. Too passive an activity.

I’m not blogging much. It’s January, I always blog in January. All my plans for the year, etc. Didn’t bother this year. Although part of that is related to my retirement planning. I was blogging about that, hit the health category, had stuff go sideways, and I haven’t blogged since. I’m not sure what I’m doing on that front. I feel like I was lying to myself, and a bunch of stuff I planned were maybe just pipe dreams, not realistic. I also found out some of my finances were not quite as good as I thought, which has messed up my confidence about retirement at all. Maybe I should just work to 35 years in 2030, take the biggest pension I can, etc. My head is really messed up about that, and so I haven’t reset to January goal setting when I can’t figure out my retirement blogging.

Instead, each night, I’m binging one of about twenty different shows … I can’t even really commit to one, although Game of Thrones has been high on the list most nights. But I’m binging until 2:00 in the morning so that when I go to bed, I fall asleep right away and sleep generally until the morning. No tossing, no turning, just wearing myself out so I crash. I’ve been there before, it’s usually when I’m depressed or avoiding something big.

Soooooo, saying no to Stephan and the way I reacted to the question has prompted me to look at other behaviours in the last month or so.

I feel like I put myself in airplane mode, disconnected from local networks and outside signals, and hunkered down to get us all home and safe. Yet after physically arriving, my brain is still not out of airplane mode yet.

Realizing it, of course, was the first step. And I’ve made some adjustments in the last few days (including blogging this post). But it’s weird that I managed to go on auto-pilot for almost three weeks without noticing. I have a pretty finely-tuned early warning radar detection system in place, I just didn’t realize that I turned it off in the Dominican, and forgot to turn it back on when I got home.

I don’t know what I will do about it yet. Perhaps I’ll write some posts to get my mental juices flowing.

At least, I finally noticed.