I'm familiar with the expression "the road to hell is paved with the best of intentions". I've always taken it to mean, no matter how virtuous your intentions may be, ultimately it is your actions that matter most. Causing harm is still causing harm even if you don't mean to.
Sometimes I wonder if another twist on that expression is that great intentions themselves send us on spirals downward, if we overlook our limitations.
The last six months have felt a lot like, two steps forward, two steps back, though I know that's an unfair assessment.
My mental health took a blow at the end of last summer. My team at work has been consistently understaffed, and promises to bring on more people, alleviate some of the load, etc - have taken too long, and been too little on arrival. There was a brief respite in the fall, a few sweet weeks of having my feet under me, before it all spiralled out of control again.
I'm out of touch with myself. I thought I had a handle on things. I had a decent amount of time off over the holidays, and thought that I could keep it together, day by day, just getting over each hurdle as it came. Turns out I was further down the rabbit hole than I thought.
I've been off work since the new year, but going back at the beginning of February. I feel ready - I miss people, I miss a reason to get up in the morning and DO things. I've been pretty good at not completely succumbing to laziness, and moping around the house in my pyjamas, but it's hard to get up early in the dark when I don't NEED to. It's hard to get out of the house when it's freezing or too mild for January and raining, when I don't HAVE to go anywhere. Laziness is easy. Especially in winter.
But I've been needle felting and colouring and keeping the house clean and seeing my therapist and my medication got upped, just a little - so I'm trying to focus on that, that I'm still growing gods damnit, I have not been stagnant simply letting my mind go empty. I've also been doing a lot of winter birding, which has been lovely on my head - out in the fresh air whenever it's a few degrees above "I can't feel my fucking face".
My favourite band (Florence + the Machine) has a book club which I mentioned briefly before -- it's nice to be reading again, and reading things that are outside my usual scope of interest.
At the same time, I'm plodding through Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (HR Ellis Davidson). It's actually a more enjoyable read than I was led to expect - not as scholarly or dry as I feared, it's just competing with a lot of other brainspace right now. It has given me an unexpected new attachment to Thor, who surprisingly has been a god I haven't worked much with, but plan to start.
My felted creations will be going up on my Etsy soon, and I have lots more planned once I can get my mitts on more wool.
I am not going to promise to be vastly more active, because I'm certainly not out of the woods yet, but my intention, hell-bound though it may leave me, is to be more active here, to pick up where I left off and really make something of this again.
Because no matter where I end up, one thing is certain: without intention I won't go anywhere.
