Answering how I am doing

I have been getting questions lately about how I am doing. Either people heard back at the beginning, or I have just told them, about “my panic attack which lead to a Leave Of Absence From Work” and they want to know how I am doing. Like the commonly uttered “how are you” when you see someone on the street you know, I don’t really know how to answer it.

When I am not working, or not thinking about work/working I am fine. I am able to fill my time well. I do have plenty of things that interest me. I am not bored yet.

a loose stack of items, folders, notebooks, knitting and glasses on a butcher block table in front of a street facing window.

I do sometimes miss the rituals around going to work at a coffee shop, but I just still do those, and “work” on other things. Sometimes reading my astrology for the week, or a small computer based favor for a friend, or organizing/editing photos, or some topic I wanted to research.

Image of a laptop closed with a watercolor book on top of it, in the receding background is an orange notebook, a glass of water, and a cup of coffee. These are all placed on a wooden butcher block style table in front of a street facing window.

For the past 5 or 6 (or forever) years I have practiced a lot, not thinking about things that I find distressing. (Is that a skill to list on a resume?) So when I don’t think about MY FUTURE in detail, or what going back to work would feel like, or what sending an email/slack to my coworkers saying good bye would say, I feel pretty good. Or rather, pretty normal. I still have my normal lows, moments where I question the meaning of life, and “if I can’t make myself go wash the dishes right now do I even deserve… whatever,” but again, I now have built skills to catch those thoughts more quickly and pass them through the filter of reality.

What I am mostly aware of is how little I feel like I get done. How much more I thought I would achieve or produce or accomplish if work was not in the way, eating up all of my hours and energy. That is not to say that not working has not changed my energy levels. I laugh more, can tease with the kids more. When we get back from an outing I sometimes have the energy to make the kids food and tend to Marc, so he can rest instead of it ALWAYS having to be the other way. I know I have said “yes!” to more things, spending time with people, or helping out. It is still pretty metered out, my energy, but there is more of it.

I don’t think I have finished any major project art wise or home wise, but I sure have started more. I have finished more books, not just audio, but also eye reading, but as soon as READING feels like something I could ACCOMPLISH more of and then I want to log it (!) and track it(!) and move through them faster(!), I shy away for a bit. Our house is no cleaner, but when I do cleaning and care tasks I am less exhausted/resentful of having to do them.

The kinds of tools I used to survive/push through in the past are basically inaccessible to me right now. Knitting, once my major coping during meetings had basically failed me sometime in the past 2 year. I think of it like a muscle I overworked, it needs to rest and heal after all of the overwork it endured. Daily tasks lists, or too much calendar planning is also something I cannot do, but random journaling about current interests, or a specific topic or feeling is starting to return.

I have no idea what my future will look like. Actually that is not the whole truth.

I have journal entries from months ago expressing what I want my life to look like, they read surprisingly similar to ones from 2016, and 2009, and what I remember of my daydreams the summer after my senior year of high school. I don’t have a nice quipy elevator pitch for it. There is not a job title that covers it. But honestly very few people understood what I did before at my paid '“adult/professional” job either. But the future can’t fit into the neat boxes of a “9-5” or other descriptor of how adults spend their time.

Unlike the baby adult version of myself who felt panic stricken that I didn’t know what my future would look like, what “I wanted to be when I grew up” or what boxes I needed to check, things I needed to strive for to get the next marker that I am doing good/great, I have more experience sitting in discomfort. I have more experience distracting my achievement brain away from the long term and just being a tiny bit in the current moment. That is until someone asks me how I am doing. Then I feel a wave of shame that I am doing just fine, as long as I am in the moment of “a Leave of Absence From Work” and not thinking about what comes next in any detailed way.