Meeting Myself Where I'm At
One of the agreements I’ve come to with myself around my move is to meet myself where I’m at.
When I lived independently before I had no true concept of pacing, or of the damage I was doing to myself physically when trying to push through the pain of my slipped disc to just keep going. Trying to cook, clean, shop and care for myself took an enormous toll when I wouldn’t accept help, or even the notion, that I just wasn’t managing anymore.
A decade on I’d like to think I’m older and wiser. Within that time I had dreams of ‘getting back to where I was’ physically before my slipped disc, which was frankly the fittest I’ve ever been in my life. That’s always been my goal. It still is, because I haven’t made it there yet. However, I reached a point where I knew I couldn’t keep waiting to get there before continuing to live the way I wanted to. I couldn’t keep delaying my own life.
The realisation dawned that compromises were going to have to be made. I’ve had plenty of time to figure out what those compromises would look like in reality: for me, it means not overbooking my diary with social events, but giving myself time to rest and build up the pace/intensity of my activities gently so that I’m physically well enough to be able to enjoy what I do book/plan. For me, it looks like setting aside part of my monthly budget to pay for a cleaner. Would I rather do it myself and have the money? Yes! But also, would I rather sacrifice that bit of disposable income to have a consistently clean home and the physical capacity to do things that fill me up, such as exercise or going to an art gallery with friends? A much more emphatic yes. So that’s where I compromise and find a balance.
Like I said: I’m meeting myself where I’m at. And where I’m at will hopefully continue to change for the better – perhaps I go down to just having a cleaner come in every so often for a deep clean. Maybe I start adding in an activity once a fortnight and see if that’s manageable on top of my current routine.
I’ve made promises to myself and my family and friends that this time I won’t overextend myself and I intend to honour those. I don’t want to overextend myself in the name of being independent. I want to actually BE independent and live in a city I love, with friends I love and doing activities that fill me up with memories, joy and inspiration. So I compromise. I meet myself where I’m at.