It was my birthday on Friday, and have such struggled the last few days to do anything. I spent hours upon hours watching videos on TikTok, doing nothing of any value. During my appointment with my therapist last week, I am needing to learn that there is actual value in doing ‘nothing’. Which is something that is really hard for me to do. So… we are not making myself feel bad about it. Or trying not to.
My birthday falls at the start of the second quarter of the year. And, I normally use this to see how I am doing so far on my aims for the year. This is a process which usually has me in tears, as I do feel like I have got nowhere in life, and feel useless. This is something that I am trying to stop focusing my energy on, as it is never very productive. It tends to be more likely to knock me off my feet, and stop me from making any progress at all, which just causes me to spiral.
So there are a few things that I wanted to do in 2026. The biggest thing is improving my health. I have experienced issues with my mental, physical, and dental health. So what have I done, or reached out to the appropriate services to do? The tale end of last year had me going to the dentist to get treatment started on a long-term broken tooth, which has died and got infected. I had that removed, and the subsequent hole filled in. I still have treatment to go, but my mouth is feeling so much better. The best thing is that my dental practice has so many nice people working at it, and have made me feel at complete ease whilst attending. Treatment is partially paid for by my dental insurance I get through may work, which is a thing I am recommending to everyone, if they can.
Sticking to things I get through my work, I called the Employee Assistant Programme, and have been receiving mental health support. I was super struggling, and have been for months. I was feeling so low, and I really didn’t know how to fix things. So I called a number, which gave me an appointment to be ‘triaged’. I think it is a way to figure out where your problems lie, and they can then match you with a suitable therapist. Which they have done. I have currently had two appointments, via telephone, and the therapist has been a great help. We were discussing about how my self-esteem is one of my main issues, and is possibly why I have struggled to get to grips with problems in the past. It certainly was an angle that I have never looked at before. My GP surgery has been a nightmare, and I have struggled to get appointments and help, so I am grateful that I have services at work that pick up the slack.
And then my rheumatoid arthritis. I fell of the bandwagon of medication, due to my mental health. Because if I had any issues, it was never one phone call. it was over 5 phone calls, every single time. And, I was struggling to do basic activities, I just buried my head in the sand. The very few times I did feel like I could chase things up, I was met with silence. Which, didn’t exactly make me want to keep going. So, I have been in pain for months, and exhausted for the same time. Last week, I received a letter to go to the Rheumatology clinic for an appointment next week. I am assuming that this is unprompted, as my phonecalls and emails have all went unanswered. Umprompted or not, this hopefully means that I can speak to someone about getting my medication sorted again. I am pretty frustrated about the whole thing to be honest.
So health is doing better, there has been movement, some more prompted than others, to trying to help make things better. This is a huge success for the beginning of the year. Another thing that I wanted to do was to read more. I set myself a target of 50 books for the year, and I have read 15. in 3 months. Which I am rather happy with.
All progress is progress, and these are things that I am getting progress in. This is what I am trying to focus on. Not what has happened in the last 40-odd years, or what other people have done in that same time frame. What I have been doing recently. Small changes every day, may not fix everything, it will work toward making things a wee bit more liveable.
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