I knew the downswing was coming

I knew it was coming! I even called it…. the inevitable downswing after my semi-manic January where I felt SUPER energized and had oodles of new-year energy.

I typically have a stretch of a few weeks in January where school + sports are just ramping back up and there’s enough margin for me to magically do “everything”, fairly effortlessly.

In February, that usually comes to a screeching halt as “regular life” is suddenly fully back in full swing post-holidays, swim season is peaking hard, and the new year energy/excitement… dwindles off a cliff. 🙂

This all hit me hard this past week! SHU’s podcast episode A February Pep Talk was extremely timely this morning.

I actually started the month very strong last week, from ~February 1-4. I was feeling really optimistic. Take that, February! Not this time! (cue ominous music)

Then on Thursday at work, I got a last minute request to basically completely re-structure the big quarterly presentation I had coming up (today, as in, like, 2 work days from last Thursday), and had been working hard on for the last several weeks. (Not that I had done anything wrong with the first version, but some key stakeholders decided we should totally focus on some other content this time, instead of following our typical agenda.) This COMPLETELY threw me for a loop. I had literally already sent the slides out. I thought the “hard part” was over (all the content creation/data review/graph creation/note prep/etc.) and was planning to shift gears to catch up on some other work for the rest of the week. Well, that didn’t happen- I suddenly was not done with the hard part. In fact, I was in the middle of panic mode and thrown into a complete tizzy, for lack of a better word.

Friday morning I had to be on the far side of town to pick up a whole new computer setup at 7:30 a.m., so I had to leave by 6:45 a.m. (This was actually great- I FINALLY HAVE TWO MONITORS THAT WORK and a brand new laptop!! Also, this was one of my annual goals, to resolve this monitor issue.) But it robbed me of my usual morning routine time, which I’m just never a fan of. It always leaves me feeling slightly out of sorts.

From there, I drove to the hospital, as I had a 9 am on-site meeting. I worked there until ~11, drove home, and then spent like 2 hours getting all my new stuff set up. (Why does technology set up always have to be an issue? Something always goes wrong… Finally got it all set up though.)

Instead of having the low-key Friday afternoon I had originally thought I’d have, once I had my new computer up and running, I proceeded to dive into fixing up this presentation and redoing all the slides. 😫😫 (Now under the time wire…). I worked until almost 7 pm Friday night, at which point my head was ready to explode (and I still hadn’t finished the slides), I had like, 1,500 steps for the whole day, I hadn’t exercised, decided I didn’t care about any of it, and went out for dinner with Ivan.

I ended up waking up at 4:45 a.m. Saturday morning, stressed out, I guess, so I got up and went to my office and worked on the slides again until ~08:00. At that point, I took a shower and then switched to cooking up 30 eggs for the swim team breakfast. That took longer than I anticipated (I made them in batches of 10, then transferred them to a small crockpot), so I was nervous I was going to be late! I ended up finishing up and getting to the high school right on time for the 9:45 breakfast.

I stayed there and helped out while the boys ate. Then they headed off on the bus to Middleton for the big Conference swim meet. I went home briefly, cleaned up all the egg pan mess I had left in a rush, and basically had ~20 minutes before I needed to leave for the swim meet myself. (Ivan had been feeling under the weather all week, so we decided he would not go to the swim meet. Honestly him lopping around all week did not help my mood, either. I mean he was legit sick, so it was warranted, but it just added another… something. You know what I mean.)

I left by ~11:15, aiming to arrive by noon, even though the meet didn’t start until 1:00. This particular pool has BAD seating and I’m no rookie- I knew it would be crowded. It was important to be early this time! Fortunately, this paid off, and I had no trouble securing a good seat. I then….sat there, saving my seat, lol, for almost an hour until the meet started. ha. (I decided to use the time to research and book a night kayaking tour in the Virgin Islands, which has been on my to-do list, so at least I got something useful accomplished.)

The meet ran from ~1-4 pm or so. Asher swam great with all best times! It was fun to watch. 🙂 I also got to see Sarah J’s son’s name announced on the screen from the Diving results the night before! It’s a small world in Blogland. 😉

I then drove almost 40 minutes home, arriving home by about 5 pm. I felt weirdly absolutely EXHAUSTED… I guess the extra early wake up + probably just stress? Because very active that day, I was not. I could feel all my wheels starting to fall off, though. I hadn’t walked, I hadn’t exercised, my diet was crummy, I hadn’t had enough water…everything suddenly felt hard again and I felt totally out of sorts.

After dinner I ended up crashing on the couch by maybe 7:30 pm and I slept there until after 11 pm. Haha. (Ivan was watching the Olympics and I think a soccer game.) Both boys came home in there somewhere and I barely even remember. My eyelids felt like lead.

Of course, I then got a little second wind and was awake from ~11- midnight, but thankfully, I did fall back to sleep, where I then slept until about 6:45. HOWEVER, when I woke up, instead of feeling rested after a technically long night of sleep, I felt like I had been run over by a dump truck. Lol. My whole body hurt. What the heck.

Fortunately we didn’t have too much on the agenda for Sunday besides the Super Bowl. I sort of shook myself and was like, ok! Come on. Let’s get re-set here. We don’t need to completely fall apart!

I took a few hours to myself in the morning to just sit and organize my week a little, I did some travel planning stuff, and just enjoyed a bit of alone time.

Then Ivan and I went in the hot tub, which felt amazing.

I ran to the grocery store NOT for a full shop- decided that was not essential today- but just to grab ingredients to make a raspberry crumble and Valentine’s dessert to bring to the Super Bowl gathering we were going to. While I was out, I picked up some little Valentine’s Day gifts for the boys. 🙂

After that, I did a home workout AND made up Friday’s yoga video I missed (I did Yoga with Adrienne’s “yoga to feel good” or something like that. I DID feel good when I was done!) I also took Charlie on a short walk to get some steps in, and more importantly, some fresh air. I was determined to not let a couple rough days completely destroy the rest of my month. As they say, it’s not about never slipping up or having rough times- that’s bound to happen. The key is to just pick right back up and not let 1-2 off days turn into 1-2 weeks of wallowing.

I then spent the afternoon baking the desserts with the pre-game Super Bowl coverage on.

I had actually put on my calendar for this Sunday “make raspberry crumble” when I did my annual planning in early January. Haha. (One of my Bonus annual goals was to bake something fun once per quintile. I figured I could bake something red around Valentine’s Day!) This was actually perfect timing, as we needed to bring something to the Super Bowl party, anyway, and Ivan’s cousin’s wife never bakes.

We headed across town the Super Bowl “party”, which was really a relatively small gathering of about 14 people in total at Ivan’s cousin’s house.

We had a nice time and the boys came too, though with a whole group of people talking, it was hard to really hear the game. I missed most of the commercials, too. Oh well. The game was a bit of a snooze, anyway! Congrats to the Seahawks. 🙂

We did turn up the Halftime Show since we always like to watch, even though I am the most out of touch person when it comes to cool or popular music. I had never even heard of Bad Bunny until he was announced as the Super Bowl show last year. (I was like Bad who? 🤣) Oops. haha. I always like a good Latin beat though, so I enjoyed that part and had fun seeing Ricky Martin still lookin’ good after all these years, too. hehe.

We were all laughing though, because no one could understand Bad Bunny! For a moment I felt bad that my Spanish was apparently failing me. But then I asked the room, Can you guys understand him?! It sounded like mostly mumbo jumbo to me. (In the room with me were at least 6 Mexicans, 2 Colombians and 1 Venezuelan, all native Spanish speakers.) And they all shook their heads and were like, Nope! No idea what he’s saying!! 😅 I felt better after that. I guess it was the combo of his Puerto Rican accent and the rap-style singing?

We did stay for the whole game but headed home right when it ended.

Today I had my presentation/big meeting in the morning, which went really well. I was up early still putting finishing touches on it at 6 am this morning… But thankfully, I got great feedback and lots of praise. WHEW! I have one more of these big quarterly program meetings to go, on Friday (liver, today was pancreas), but those slides are fine as they are and are good to go.

I’m feeling a sense of relief now with today’s meeting behind me. I got a great gym workout in at lunch (making up from yesterday) and am hopeful I can turn my little February downswing back into an upswing!!

I do have a swim board meeting tonight, volleyball on Wednesday night (and I need to run Ivan to the airport very early Wednesday to fly to Mexico) and then Asher’s big Sectional swim meet is Saturday. There’s another team breakfast, though I’m just bringing store bought muffins this time, and a team party (with parents) at someone’s house after. Not looking like a super quiet stretch ahead, but I think I’ll inevitably have a little extra alone time with Ivan gone for most of the next week.

How is your February going? I always feel like January is very long and then 28-day February just ZOOMS by with no warning.

Daily Gratitude:

I am grateful for having this stressful work thing over with now.