It's 3am I must be lonely
anxiety sucks man
Life has felt like a LOT lately. This is the last week of school for my kids so there have been a lot of deadlines and events to close out the year. Because it’s so dang hot in Arizona, the academic year starts in early August (still hot but on average lower than June I guess?) and ends before Memorial Day which is the last Monday in May. I heard someone call this time “Maycember” because it gets as busy as the holidays, and I totally agree.
The tech industry being a hot mess hasn’t helped. TJ got laid off last week unexpectedly, and it’s fine as he was going to retire in the near future anyway, but not, like, NOW. Because health insurance is crazy expensive I applied to a bunch of jobs again and promptly got rejected from about half of them. Most of these were jobs I could easily do, not “stretch” titles for me. Sigh. We’ll be fine, and I’m looking forward to us both not working, but it’s a lot of new admin things to sort out.
P.S. I hope whoever decided health coverage should be tied to your job is in a very hot place right now, and I don’t mean Arizona.
And of course the state of the US. Enough said about that.
I never thought of myself as anxious. During the pandemic, a friend shared that she’d wake up at 3 am with racing thoughts and crazy worries and have a heck of a time getting back to sleep. It was so comforting to know someone else did that too (!) but then I realized THAT is anxiety. I don’t worry about specific events - it’s like a vague dread about (handwaving) all the things. Well, it was gone for a long while when I quit my job and now it’s back, good times. I also realize that what I was classifying as “stress” during high school and college was probably also anxiety though with a more targeted focus.
We learned this year that one kid has anxiety, and probably has had it since age 5. I looked back at some evaluations and didn’t pick up on it before, sigh. They are learning some great techniques through therapy for managing it and it must be working, because they did AMAZINGLY well this second semester.
So I guess this is the Season for Managing Anxiety as all of us struggle with it to some degree. I don’t know if we’re just predisposed to it, or it’s something about our way of life that’s causing this. I mean culturally, in the US, but I suppose it could be our specific family too.
I slept really well last night and that seems to help a lot - I think caffeine late in the day makes the 3am anxiety wakeups worse. As a result I’m trying hard to cut out soda for many reasons - caffeine, artificial sweeteners, cost and I know I feel better and less bloated when I haven’t had it. My afternoon pick-me-up was a walk to a local burger place because they have diet Dr Pepper at their fountain. RIP.
Hot tip: For 5 years since the pandemic, I stopped seeking out news. If it’s important, my news junkie husband will tell me. If it’s fear-baiting or just dumb, I don’t need it. I uninstalled all news apps on my phone, quit most social media, made my search engines stop displaying headlines, and only read the fun parts of the physical New York Times we get on Sundays. It has helped SO MUCH.
But it turns out, managing habits to help anxiety are the same ones that help my physical health as well. I was super disappointed to find out my A1C number went back up. No surprise because C started a baking hobby, I fell in love with the muffins at Sprouts, and my eating habits can be described as YOLO. Party Size Doritos for our Eurovision party? YES!
So getting better sleep, less empty carbs, caffeine, news and sugar (fake or real), and making the effort to get exercise are all helpful. That’s the plan for the next few months and I’m looking forward to it, because it’s lonely at 3 am.
But hope you and TJ sort things out career-wise or retirement-wise soon because these things do cause stress!
Going through old email, saw this. Yes health & anxiety are related. Not just related, causal in both directions. Somewhat counter-culturally, my opinion is that the health issues (ie unnatural food and microbiome) are causing the anxiety mostly. At least, my experience was that when I started eating primarily fat and protein my anxiety disappeared, I became happier and calmer than ever before, and my insomnia went away. Like, totally away. Gone. Add in fermented foods everyday and that's even better. Once again, the microbes are in control! We have to outsmart them. The bad ones at least. And all this happened while going through menopause. So anxiety and insomnia and roller-coaster emotions are not result of going through menopause. They are result of health issues. They are health issues. Because after all, the brain is part of the body! And this is true for kids as well as adults as well as women in our 50's!