Tiny Victories

Sometimes you have days where even simple things seem impossible. I think this idea is prevalent in my mind because I am coming to the end of a fortnight of night shifts and I feel like every day has been a bit like this. It is possible however that tiredness is skewing my perception of time. I have said before in my blog that from time to time I suffer from depression which comes and goes (thankfully self managed so I consider myself lucky in that respect) and anxiety is my constant companion to one degree or another. Mostly right now my anxiety is about not getting enough sleep. I think I might just have generalized sleep anxiety while on nights and this ironically keeps me from getting as much sleep as I need post night shift.

Now some people can cope admirably on very little sleep but I am definitely not one of them. I fall apart and have been known to lose basic adulting skills like cooking and driving for hours at a time. I don't think I realized quite how much I needed good sleep to be a clever human until I stopped getting it.

Sometimes when I feel like this the world can be an overwhelming place. I stay in bed because all the processes involved in getting up seem too confusing (I'd like to clarify in this instance I am referring to occasions where having finished a night shift I manage to scrape 3-4 hours broken sleep). It can sometimes be easy to mistake this level of exhaustion for a dark cloud of depression and be swallowed up by it, staying in bed because the covers have accepted me as one of their own.

Its times like these when its good to start celebrating the tiny victories like; Getting up and showering, making myself look human, making an actual meal for myself, going outside, getting to the gym, surviving a work out, making contact with someone even though sentences can seem ridiculously complicated, doing anything other than watch bad tv, remembering the words to all the kids songs I know and making my nephew laugh.

Most of these are not a big deal. They are not the kinds of things you would text a friend about or update your Facebook to share your good news but sometimes the really small things make all the other things possible.

Sometimes these are the things that make you feel as though you are not failing at life and cause you to abandon all hope when you see night duty coming up on the roster.

When I first started doing nights more regularly I would cancel all plans and I would manage to drag my ass to the gym on days off or before night shifts and spend the rest of my time lying on my bed or couch feeling very tired but also very isolated. Now that I am trying harder to not put life on hold during these two weeks it doesn't feel like as much of an ordeal.

I'm getting home to visit more, I'm getting to the gym more and outdoors more and yes I am cracking up a little because I feel like a permanently exhausted pigeon but I'm getting through it  by resting when I can and having coffee when I can't and I think this night shift experience applies to other bad days. 

It's about trying to do something even when you really want to do nothing at all and then celebrating the things that don't  seem like a big deal to anyone else. So here's to tiny victories, may there be many more of them.