Ways in which I have hypocritically failed at self-care this week
Hello on this 87th Tuesday in the year of our new apparent lord, Corona.
I know I might seem like I have it all together, when you get one (hopefully) wise and witty post from me once a week. I'm very tempted to let you continue this flattering belief about me. But in the interest of full transparency and in supporting your self-care habits, let's examine the ways in which I am full of crap: namely, my complete and utter inability to feed myself lunch.
I have an art studio space separate from my apartment, which I have been using for office space during COVID. This is an excellent set up and I'm incredibly grateful for it. This lovely space does not, however, have a refrigerator, a microwave, or any way to keep or store food. I have a hot water kettle for tea, but that's it. Add this to my millennial inability to competently cook for myself and you end up with a majorly compounding problem. (For the record, I was 6 weeks in to a 12 week basics-of-cooking course when corona virus happened and derailed my whole plan to become a moderately together adult, and now it's basically all take-out, all the time. #someregrets).
I don't eat breakfast. I've never eaten breakfast. You can save your diatribes on how it's the most important meal of the day, blah blah blah. I promise you, my unrelenting and annoyingly healthy father has berated me on this topic for the last 30 years of my life, to no avail. Breakfast and I aren't meant to be, and we've made peace with our ships-passing-in-the-night status. Lately, however, I've been neglecting my main squeeze: lunch. Somehow, I'll look up from my laptop and realize it's about 1:30/2, and then I'll think "oh but if I go out and grab lunch now, then it'll mess up my appetite for dinner, and I'm not feeling hungry, so I'll just push through." And then I eat 4 peanut butter pretzels from trader joes and carry on with my day.
But then I get home and immediately collapse into an hour-long nap and am indecisive, grumpy, and restless when I wake up. It took me an embarrassingly long time to recognize this pattern and how it is not actually functional. My spouse noticed this much more quickly than I did, go figure. Turns out, if you do not put food in your body for 20 hour stretches, day after day, you aren't at your best. Facepalm. Pollock, you literally have multiple degrees in human behavior and promoting mental wellbeing. GET. IT. TOGETHER.
So, this week, I'm attempting to joyously feed myself lunch. Even if it's at 2pm, and even if it's a $15 sandwich that is entirely too expensive but also so delicious. I also bought myself an emergency stock of cup-of-noodles because even if it isn't even the healthiest choice, at least I'll have zero excuse not to put food in my body. My goal for lunch at the moment is quantity, not quality.
Now that you've read about how I, someone who is supposed to be an expert on self-care, completely face-planted on my own human body maintenance, I'm wondering how you have face-planted. Did you work until way too late in the evening several times this week? Did you look up from your desk at 3pm and realized you forgot to brush your teeth? (Just me? This is a judgement free zone, stop with the side-eyeing) Is your neck/leg/back/wrist/pinky toe bothering you because you haven't stretched it recently? Are you dehydrated and suffering through a minor headache all day?
How can you remove a roadblock to your self-care this week? For me, that's removing any guilt around money, time frame or healthiness of my lunches, so that I can focus on making sure I EAT something. Maybe for you that means filling up an obnoxious amount of water glasses and leaving them all over the house so that you'll remember to drink something when you're going about your day (at your desk, on the way to the bathroom, on the kitchen counter, like in the movie Signs but minus the hostile aliens). Or maybe it's rolling out your yoga mat next to your desk so that when a meeting starts a bit late, or a kid doesn't show for an appointment, you can get in a quick stretch.
We're in this for the long haul, friends. We have to figure out how to put our oxygen masks on first. That email can wait, while you close your eyes and think of 5 things for your "what's good" list. You can wait to make that phone call until after you take your shoes off and walk around barefoot on your front lawn (or hallway carpet) for a few minutes noticing the way the bones in your feet articulate when you walk intentionally. No one will die if you're 2 minutes late to that zoom meeting because you haven't been able to use the bathroom in 4.5 hours.
Onward, friends.
