A few weeks ago, I called it “quits” on blogging daily about choices, my “today I choose” series. I felt that I had reached a good point where I was more aware of my conscious choices each day, a state of awareness where I could perhaps instead write once a week about various choices. Hoping, in part, that by writing once a week, my choices might seem more significant. That somewhere in a week, I would have made some, I don’t know, “larger” choice. Something worthy of a blog post.

Instead, I feel like Dory from Finding Nemo. I need to just keep swimming. Because for the last few weeks, I’ve been drowning.

I know the signs. I eat more crap food. I stay up late watching TV. I try to get by on several hours sleep so that when I do go to bed, I’m too tired to have my mind swirl around wondering “what if” or “what about” things that are bothering me. Some people choose booze or drugs to drown out the inner voice, I use TV, junk food, and sleep deprivation. It numbs me to the point where when I go to bed, I crash.

Last night was the “fall back” timeframe for daylight savings time, and I was binge-watching Lost. I had forgotten about the timeshift, so when my computer reset my clock back at 2:00 a.m. to 1:00 a.m., I thought I had misjudged the time. When I went to bed at 5:00 a.m., for no good reason at all, Jacob was already awake. Me? I was well into my second wind and didn’t feel tired at all. I just went to bed because I knew I needed to sometime.

But honestly? It is just me self-sabotaging myself, putting myself down as far as I can go on the energy level, driving myself to create a challenge to overcome. A false sense of success that is reminiscent of all-nighters in high school and university. Cramming at the last minute after weeks of procrastination.

When I’m super tired, I run on about 70% energy reserves for the day. 70% efficient, or 70% of “normal” I guess. I can still function, I get my work done, but it isn’t exactly “living”. It’s more like surviving. There’s probably some metaphor in there about isolation, setbacks, watching Lost, Covid, etc.

I’ve got about 1000 things to do in November, things that NEED to get done. And I’ve been wallowing, procrastinating, avoiding. I’d like to say today, November 1st, I did something productive to overcome my inertia, but honestly, I didn’t, not really.

My main choice today, after sleeping in quite late after being up way too late, were first and foremost to have Andrea cut my hair and for me to cut Jacob’s. We’ve been debating, or rather I’ve been debating, whether people in salons have likely progressed far enough for it to be safe, given that we are officially in a high-risk household. We have eliminated almost all vectors in and out, so is this one that is REALLY worth risking? We had some decent options, and if we were medium-risk, I suspect I would have gone for it. But we’re not, and I didn’t. I just didn’t feel comfortable going for it. I feel like I made Jacob paranoid enough too that he wasn’t in favour, but there’s no way to know either way. I didn’t feel like it was an acceptable risk, so we did the home thing again.

Equally, Jacob and Andrea made a stab at normalcy yesterday. Even though we weren’t doing Hallowe’en for either going out or giving out candies, Jacob and Andrea wanted to do a pumpkin carving. I just assumed we wouldn’t bother, and so I had made zero effort to even plan for it as a possibility. But Saturday came, and we went to the one we always go to and picked up two pumpkins. Today, Jacob and Andrea did the scooping, and then we took a design that Jacob hand-drew of an outline of a penguin and he and I then carved it. The other was a bit soft and we just wrote on it. Pretty simple, and Jacob could do more of the carving this year than usual.

Later, I opted for pizza for dinner and let Jacob choose Pizza Hut, as he likes to do. To be honest, it was more opting for him to choose, than Pizza Hut, just wanting him to make a choice and enjoy the power of doing so. He is always so happy to choose it. And then we just sat and watched two episodes of Knight Rider from Season 01. I find it amusing that he talks to the TV while the episode is unfolding. Like he’s telling them what to do or not. I know in part that it is his anxiety playing out, and talking it out lets him release some of it, but I find it amusing. At least, I do so far.

I then binged the rest of S04 tonight of Lost, and I’m headed to bed.

While all of those choices had their conscious components, I realized that the daily posting was keeping me grounded and giving me some momentum. I need it again, particularly this month. I probably can’t keep it up every day but at least I’ll be able to do it some or hopefully most days. I need to do it to stay sane.

Today I choose to restart blogging about my conscious daily choices.