It’s 11:30 PM here, the night before I wanted to have a blog post up.
That may not be late to you, especially now that quarantine has made it clear to everyone that time is just an illusion. But it’s late for me.
And here I am, mentioning Covid again. I really wanted to write a post that wasn’t connected in any way to any kind of pandemic. It’s harder than you’d think.
Like I said, I had a post scheduled to go up today. Or to be more precise, I had a little blue stripe on my content calendar that told me that today was a day I wanted a blog post to go out. It’s usually enough to imagine having to white out that blue stripe and mess up my beautiful planner, that I end up with something to talk about before the day comes.
But quarantine is finally starting to get to me, I think. I thought, with my lovely Filofax system, that I was–if not immune to the mental health pitfalls of cabin fever–at least well-equipped to deal with them.
After all, we haven’t run out of milk or toilet paper. I have our grocery orders on a well-tooled schedule, and I’ve been cooking delicious, healthy dinners for the family, while keeping plants alive and growing a human. I’m pretty put together if you take a quick glance.
But then our anniversary came around and shone a light on some dark corners of my cheerful mindset. It honestly sneaked up on me.
No, I wasn’t going to forget the date. It was on my future log, then on my monthly log, then on my weekly spread with a pretty little sticker.
But actually preparing for it? Yeah not so much.
My husband, who got me the most thoughtful, perfect Mother’s Day gifts (both tangible and intangible) was the one who made the anniversary plans. He set up a little road trip outing to get us out of the house safely. Again, the perfect gift I needed more than I realized.
I didn’t get him anything.
I picked his birthday gift from the website that promised to ship it within a week so it could get here before his birthday tomorrow. I picked the gift itself off a list he gave me explicitly a while back.
What I’m trying to say is that quarantine is messing with my planner head.
(I’m not even going to edit this blog post very much either, because I think this is the honesty I need for myself and for you right now.)
Over the weekend, I helped my husband set up his own Bullet Journal. He’s planning to use it almost exclusively for work, as his job is giving him his own project to run, and he needs to get his brain around it.
It’s the first time he’s ever really used a planner system, so I’m doing my best to ease him into it. We started by watching Ryder Carroll’s video about it and talking through the bare bones basics.
I realized that night, that there’s a sort of “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Planner Needs”
He’s at a point where he needs to focus on his due dates this week, his task list today, and not much else.
I’m at a point where I’m in desperate need of a weekly brain dump and a monthly habit tracker to remind me to drink water and exercise.
You start with “What do I need to do today?” and then move on to “How Can I Better My Life?” in baby steps along the way.
But it’s not linear.
I think of myself as pretty good at this planning thing by now. But this is a time where preparing the perfect anniversary for my husband is not even on my radar.
And I think it doesn’t actually have to be. I don’t need to force that out of myself right now, because instead, I have a husband who’s been taking the toddler and letting me sleep in whenever he can.
Someday, I’m going to be able to share with you my theories about planner funk, and all this fits in there. Basically, you need to just be generous to yourself.
As I was saying, I’m writing this at almost midnight the night before I want it to publish.
I’ve been experiencing pregnancy insomnia lately.
Not the middle of the night kind. The bedtime kind. I still wake up in the middle of the night to pee, but it hasn’t been a problem lately.
No, this is the kind that has me up thinking about the people I want to video chat tomorrow and where we should put the compost bin we want to get and when I’m going to find time to wrap my husband’s birthday gift (that fortunately did arrive in time) and when to put in the order for tomorrow’s dinner to pick up and what else do I have to add to the grocery list?
Maybe it’s not pregnancy insomnia after all.
Maybe it’s quarantine insomnia.
The thought of the economy opening back up and letting risks slip in through the cracks is literally keeping me up at night. I don’t know if I’m ready to send the toddler back to her babysitter. And I don’t know if I’m more worried for my unborn second baby’s health, or for the burden of making a choice that could potentially put my family at risk.
Choices are scary.
I could probably keep writing stream-of-consciousness musings all night long, but that wouldn’t be good for anyone.
If you related to anything I wrote here, then I’m glad I hit “publish.”
Comment below with the struggles that keep you up at night so I won’t feel so alone when I’m lying in bed tomorrow.
For tonight, I’m going to go give bedtime another try. God bless.
