Blogboost - How to guard my energy level

I've signed up for the fall challenge from Blogboost to blog the entire fall about specific themes. That helps breaking my "diary" rhythm here a little bit.  In the first half of October we are stimulated to write about Positivity and Energy.   




It feels quite ironic to start blogging about Energy right now since I've been very low on energy lately and my previous weeks were quite a struggle.  You might not have noticed on this blog where posts keep coming at a regular pace.  In fact, I just profit from my staycation end of August where I happened to preschedule more than 15 posts ahead of time and then I tried to write a few posts each weekend.  But the truth is that I have now almost depleted my spare stock of posts and I haven't written anything on a weekday in the previous weeks, which is odd. 

We had our vacation period at the end of August but I knew that upon my return to work, September would be heavy.  And hell it has been. 

While unfortunately a lot of companies are in trouble in this pandemic, we can't keep up with customer demand, and we are drowning in work up to the risk of having people in our teams fall out.  In 10 days time we had to train everyone in a major system change with a go live mid September, that changed our way of working radically. Fortunately that went really well and has been adopted positively but as to be expected, the change has lowered our efficiency for a while due to the adjustment time.
We had to plan and replan and puzzle for limited return to the office in safe ways. 
In the 3rd week of September we had a restructuring announcement that we knew that was coming yet the content of it fell like a bomb.  While I'm still learning to be a people manager of a significant team, it is hard to deal with everybody's emotions at that moment in times of uncertainty, change and goodbyes. 
And then privately we had boosted our social contacts a bit in the first half of September, profiting of the Indian Summer, trying to suck in some contacts while still possible as I was pessimistic on how this pandemics is turning again.  Yes, that is also something that takes my energy .   And there's some bad medical news among our bigger circle too etc... 

What a heavy month. 

My fitbit confirmed what I felt: I have literally slept significantly worse and less than the previous months and I've dragged myself through several days.  I mentioned the latter to some friends who warned me to take care of myself.   Very relevant and good comment but how do you do that when you can't control all those things happening around you that eat all your energy? 

Well first of all, I am aware of it. I am aware that my energy levels are low and I recognize that I must guard my energy level.  I suppose and hope that is a first good step.   I know a lot of people refer to the theory of spoons: well I know I'm running low(er) on spoons these days. 

I'm also aware that I can't control a lot of things.  I can't control the restructuring at work getting launched, but I can control my attitude towards it etc.  So I try to focus there. 

I try to boost my sleep (in vain).  I've been going to bed rigorously early.  I tried to avoid all (online) discussion or worries or news before bedtime for as much as you can control that.  I find that just staring mindlessly at tv before bedtime (I watch the soap Thuis  postponed and usually stick around for the following program which is often a nice documentary type of program such as Dwars door Belgium, Durf te vragen, ... while I involved online less than usual. I knew blogging would simply cost too much energy, would make my eyes more sore and would result in extremely incoherent posts. 

I try to pick up my heart rate coherence breathing exercises with some more regularity again. Since September my yoga classes have started again and I am attending with a better frequency than previous years (thanks to Jan not travelling). 

I also try to not drink too much alcohol if I am in need of a good night sleep. Jan and I tend to drink wine with dinner but I have experienced that I shouldn't drink too much or my sleep gets affected. So when I am truly too tired, I will go for non-alcoholic drinks (and comfort food). 

And for Corona reasons but also for my energy levels, I have cut down all my social contacts again which right now feels like a blessing for a while. Retreating to myself a bit more with more time for my family and reading and walking is something to look forward for. 


Comments

Els said…
take Care x I try to do it too nut often easier said than done

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