Published: 2019-01-29T00:00:00.000+00:00
Edited: =this.date-modified
Status: 🌲evergreen

Doing my best not to fail at this

Reading time: 2 minutes

One of the hardest things for me to deal with having mental health issues is the fact that I can't do as much as I would like to.

And since I've never really got used to the idea of doing a little bit every day and pacing myself to try and make sure I don't burnout. I tend to have days where I do a lot, days where I do too much by far and then the next day I have to deal with the consequences of that.

It's really difficult to get myself into a mindset that is something other than boom and bust. Some days it just feels like I have limitless energy and I can do whatever it is I have to do. And then afterwards I have days where I barely have the energy to get out of bed. That's just how it goes.

Yesterday was a boom day. Yesterday was a day where I did too much by far.

I pretty much had the best writing day of the year so far. Yesterday's word count exceeded most of the days where I wrote the year in 2018 as well.

And yesterday I went out for lunch out and did some walking too. I did some chores and did some editing. I got up half eight in the morning and was pretty much still going at 1 am today.

I did too much and today I'm paying for it.

I've not been able to do anywhere near as much as I would like to do today.

The thing is that isn't ideal because, as I said in yesterday's post, I've set myself this challenge of posting to Medium every day for thirty-two days. Every day until the end of February.

And today is day two of that challenge and I really don't have much energy to spare for writing. I barely had the energy to get out of bed today and that's a problem because I'm not kind of person who does well at failing.

I never really learned how to fail graciously and falling down on this challenge that I've set myself on the second day to me would very much be a failure. And I can't let myself do that so this is the post I'm writing because I can't let myself fail on day two of this challenge.

Because to fail at this challenge wouldn't just be letting myself down, I'd be letting my family down as well.

I have my reasons for wanting to increase my presence on Medium, good reasons, and that's why I couldn't let myself skip today. So today's post isn't about anything particularly important. It isn't about any of the experiences I mentioned yesterday and it isn't what I would have picked for my post on on day two of a challenge like this.

But it is a post.

It fulfils the criteria I set out for myself and it means that by posting this I haven't failed on day two. I might fail at some point in the future, I mean, there's thirty days left at this point so it's possible.

But I'm not gonna have fallen at the first hurdle and that's enough for now.

Maybe one day I will learn how to pace myself and take care of myself. Maybe one day I will learn how to fail at something graciously. Maybe one day I'll even learn how not to take failure so personally.

Until then, this is the post I wrote. And this post existing is a success in and of itself. That's enough for me today.

Originally published at medium.com