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To rest properly

Lately I've felt an irresistible desire to rest properly. Today after my morning coffee I gave food to the animals. Merely walking cross my yard felt like an effort, so after that I just went back to have a nap. Couple of times I woke up to eat a little and then felt asleep again. Now it is 6 pm, I'm awake again and I don't yet know if I will do some work or should I just watch a movie and go sleeping again...

More than a year ago my therapist suggested me to have a proper holiday - to rest, allowing my chronic stress to melt away. As, actually, many of my symptoms might be related to the ill effects of chronic stress. Occasional failures to think clearly, trouble managing my timetables, eerie feelings of living in mist - yes I can see how those originate from suffering years of domestic violence, but actually severe domestic violence is a cause of stress, especially when it goes on and on. And in my adult life I've often put myself in such a situation where I feel that I can't take care of my inner needs, as I constantly need to get things done. Or even when I could have a break, there still has been a nagging worry about securing my financial income or some other stuff. Well, yes, but last summer I consciously tried to have some time off - a complete month with no customers for massage, and after that the rest of the summer was dotted with free days and nice social events. It kind of a worked - after all that partying I felt more energetic and started a major renovation task with my house.

This year I have been better able to control my timetables, I haven't fallen back to constantly overworking. So, in some ways things have been a lot better. And I had reserved several periods of free days in my calendar. Around Easter, and then in the beginning of May. Both times I was thinking that I will have nice free days for renovating, fishing, coding for UrW, and fishing. But both times I found myself so exhausted that I had to sleep for two or three days, only having brief active moments. Those moments I spent tanning that hide and fishing, as simple physical activities often feel like they help the brain recover. Now, again, this weekend I've felt that I need to turn away from all the sensory information, just to lay still and close my eyes and fall into my inner world.

In a way it makes sense - maybe I've finally understood what my therapist meant by "to rest properly". As, sometimes, it is not about doing nice things - some aspects of chronic stress might actually need a lot of sleep and physical rest. Not just a day off, but two or three days in a row, which allows for some slower physiological reactions to take place, deeper muscles to let go of their tensions. Also, this might be the first time in my adult life when I feel that all the big things are safe and secure : I have a nice home in a beautiful place, the renovation project seems pretty much doable, and I have inner trust that my income will be OK, I have an adult son who is going fine in his life - for a moment I can just relax, and not to worry about survival. It feels that I've been carrying that chronic stress like a bag of stones - now i can finally take off that bag and unload the stones, one by one.

Or, at least, I hope so. I haven't consulted a doctor for feeling extremely sleepy. I just trust my own inner interpretation. I don't feel sick, my heart rate and blood pressure all feel like they are OK. But of course it always might be that all of this sleepiness is not because of chronic stress; it might be that there is something which needs medical attention. But at the moment I hope that it is just healthy to allow myself to rest properly. Everything I was planning to do, I can do it later no problem. And, actually, I wish that after this period of proper rest I would find my thoughts more clear - which is essential for getting any coding done =)

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It's nice to hear that you are feeling good!(Really, these are not words from necessity or to be polite)
Sometimes I have that thing with planning as well - I plan how many things I will do but then I am very tired and can't do nothing.

I don't know if you have time to this, but I relax by just lying and listening to music, thinking about life. It's a nice way to turn off and get rid off stress for some time. Sometimes quite hard to not concentrate on things you'll have to do, your duties(animals fe) etc. That sleeping thing you wrote about is interesting. Maybe I will try it sometimes.

Oh and btw: I told my mother that you like Raduza and she said that you might like Čechomor. I listened to it and it's quite nice. I like this song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz_Pa47TFuw

I don't know if you care, but these are my favourite musicians: Karel Kryl, Jaromír Nohavica
If you want you can listen to them :) I don't know if you'll enjoy them, because you don't understand czech(their songs have nice wordgames(?)) and don't know if it's your style. But I don't understand Finnish and still like Finnish songs. So I don't know, just try them if you want =)

Oh, and if I can recommend some movie, then it's The Neverending story. Really nice fantasy movie(more like fairy tale) but it's very nice(at least for me) It has very special atmosphere, magic world and it's.. just good. =) Probably not your cup of tea in my opinion, but I don't know you that well.

I saw The Neverending Story when I was a schoolkid, something like 11 years old. It was mid-1980's, digital movies weren't yet invented so all the movies were distributed on physical reels. Since our small village didn't have a cinema, we kids seldom got to see films on a big screen. But once there was a group travelling with movie equipment, and they set up a temporary cinema in our village, for two days or so. It was there where I saw The Neverending Story, and sure, I did like it. Now, if I remember correctly, the story is by Michael Ende, who also wrote a story "Momo", which I read and liked.

Thanks for the music tips, I'll listen to them later on. Yup, I tend to listen to song lyrics, as they contribute a lot to the listening experience. But sometimes it is so refreshing to listen to songs in an unknown language; it is like diving into the non-verbal emotional content of the song.

And one more clarification about this thing with resting properly. For years my "normal state" has been that of "being nearly over-exhausted". And the ordinary night sleep is enough to recover back to the normal state... I remember when I was still working at the mill, one day I was running a process where I manually poured kernels into the mill, using a big bucket. I had to wait for two minutes for the mill to process a load of kernels, and then pour in a new load. Well, I poured in a load, and sat down leaning on the big bucket - and suddenly I woke up when my boss looked at me, asking "Is everything OK?". Yup, in the middle of the all the machine noise, just sitting still for 30 seconds, and I had fallen asleep... because that was my normal state; most of the time I had to struggle a bit to keep me going.

Sometimes that also happened with the massage work - when one customer had left, and I had fifteen minutes to rest before the next customer, I set alarm in my mobile phone, and took a nap of seven minutes - kind of a using every possibility to rest a little.

Now, if that is a "normal state", then how to shift that? It feels a bit like updating the operating system - small updates you can install on the go, but for bigger updates the system needs to be rebooted. And the overwhelming sleepiness I have felt these days, it feels bit like rebooting - in a way, it is different from ordinary state of sleep. I don't remember having any dreams, it is more like slipping into some deep state of self-hypnosis, which - I guess - is pretty close to the deepest states of ordinary sleep. Bit kind of a just "switching off" the daily consciousness, letting the sub-conscious brain patterns to reset and to re-organize.

Or, I hope so =) While I'm still in the middle of this process, I have no way of knowing how long this takes, how many days I have to just rest properly, and in which condition I will emerge out of this extreme sleepiness. (As, I certainly do believe that this is just a temporary period, and the best things I can do is not to fight against it, but to allow myself to go with the process.)

PS. Well, to balance the picture, here's a video from Saturday. My father visited briefly, and he brought me some food stuff and a bottle of jamaican rum.

Here I'm cooking https://youtu.be/3CO_HRF53JQ

Hello, I am here with next question.
Can you recommend some good books?(Except Zen and the art of X :P I have this one already.
Thank you

Well, if you haven't yet read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, do it =)

Then some other titles which come to mind easily. I'll try to pick one book from each author;

Stanislaw Lem : The Cyberiad
Joseph Heller : Catch-22
Arkadi & Boris Strugatski: Stalker
Didier Comès: La Belette (I don't know how it is translated in English. This one is a graphic novel)
(At first I thought I won't mention Hugo Pratt, because his works are so well known, but maybe I do:
Hugo Pratt, pretty much anything by Hugo Pratt, yes =) )
Petteri Hannila : Fargoer (I admit I haven't yet read it myself, but this one is partly inspired by UrW)

And finally, if you feel bold, try an all-time classic of Finnish literature: Seven Brothers by Aleksis Kivi

I didn't know you has a youtube page! I was wondering how you sounded if that makes sense, voice always helps text when your reading what people have wrote/written, the beard was alive!

Hope you're feeling fresh my friend, have a beer and keep those spirits high!

The youtube channel was introduced in this post: http://www.enormouselk.com/?q=erkkasblog/playfulness&page=1#

Right now it is Saturday morning, after coffee. Today I'll drive to Sami's, so hopefully in the evening I can have a sauna and a beer with Sami. Let's rock =)

Man I'm behind on the back log of blogs to read, my mind is too busy with the sunshine we're blessed with lately, I may need to go and refresh in it today as I drank a few beers last night aha felt it this morning :D

You were up earlier man than me for sure, Enjoy your day/evening man...wish I had a sauna!

Ooh, sunshine =)

Ah, and I never assume that people have been reading all of my earlier posts. As I was about to write a few lines to comment of the youtube-channel, but then I remembered that I might have written those thougths already, so instead of re-writing I just posted a link. But sometimes I might myself forget what I've written =)

It was a lot of driving today, but all in all the day has been good. At this time of the year there is still evening twilight at 11pm. Swans were trumpeting down at the lake, as we sat outdoors after sauna. Beer was cold and good.

Note: rest properly and also EAT well. Sometimes I neglet both, but I have been feeling very tired for some months (a year maybe), I tought it was normal because of everyday life, but after blood tests turns out I had a lack of potassium o.O Turns out potassium controls muscles and hearth beat, and when it is low depression and extreme fatigue is a result (palpitations/dizziness when it reachs lower values - the reason I went to the doctor, twice this month). But I eat a lot of things with potassium so the lack must be a result of something else I don't yet know neither doctors (thyroid values are a little high, maybe it comes from that since it controls nutrients absorption amongst other things). Iodine is important for the thyroid, so I am reinforcing that in my alimentation while waiting for exams. Conclusion: sleep and rest well, but aslo eat well, in my case I have been negleting both for some time, sleeping only 6 hours per night and jumping meals with quick snaks because of laziness to cook, and now I am finding the consequences, the extreme fatigue and depression I have been feeling comes a lot from that, shame on me for being bad to my body.
Note: it is not your case, just sharing since this post made me think about that and the need to look after our own body needs properly, I'm working on that. Glade you're doing good, all the best to you.

Whew! The first time I read it, I thought it said you had "a lack of Possum". Lol.

I have a bad habit of just eating the same thing all the time. And then I guess I get some kind of vitamin deficiency and get grouchy.

But, I am not a very fancy cook, either.... My usual cooking procedure is to mix it all into a stew and boil until everything is an even gray color. :3

So I made up a mixture of inexpensive dried goods (basmati rice, beans, lentils, chickpeas, barley, etc) from a recipe I found and since lost somewhere on the internet, which if I have calculated the nutritional content correctly should provide all of the nutrients that a person needs other than B12 (which is pretty much only available from meat).

I call it "Polecat's Slop Bucket".

So I started eating on that as a cheap soup for lunch each day, and started feeling a lot better. Still eating whatever for dinner, but I think the soup kind of balances things out. I get a little tired of it after while, but it's super cheap so I keep eating it. :P

My mixture is:
8 parts basmati rice
2 parts yellow lentils
2 parts hulled barley
2 parts red kidney beans
1 part split peas
1 part chickpeas
(to taste) some garlic powder
(to taste) some beef bullion powder
a dash of olive oil

Unless you use canned kidney beans (more expensive), you have to soak the beans a while before mixing in the rest and cooking it. Otherwise they don't get quite done. And supposedly can be slightly toxic if not soaked. But I am lazy so I usually just make a big pot of it and eat on it for several days, adding more water now and then when I reheat it.

Edit: Forgot about the olive oil. :O

Oo, a recipe! Thanks for sharing!

Yeah a stew is a good solution for daily "basic food" - it is easy to re-heat, and can be varied with adding occasional spices or mixing in (nearly) whatever happens to be at hand.

to Paulo:
Digestion is a highly complex system, with a lot of subprocesses involved. So, if you get a plenty of potassium in your food but somehow it doesn't get absorbed into your system, then there surely might be something wrong. I hope that eventually things get better!

I have a hunch that thyroid values being little high might be because your body reacts to the situation. Think about a primitive man: prolonged lack of sleep and insufficient nutrition most likely means a stressful situation, and the bodily system tries to fight that. So, I hope that your inner caveman finds back the balance of a peaceful situation =)

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