I absolutely love Mindy Kaling. Her book, "Is Everyone Hanging Out With Me?" is a great read, completely hilarious but also rife with positive messages. In one essay, she talks about being sick and how no one wants to hear the story of your cold. To paraphrase, it's always the same story: you woke up feeling fine, took a turn for the worst after lunch, and eventually made a rapid recovery.
She's right, hearing about getting people's illness is so boring. That being said, I have been fighting one of the weirdest viruses of my 31 years for the past 10 days or so, and I am only now starting to come out of it.
I read a quotation once about how we should all be able to feel the way we do about life after we come out of a period of sickness. In some ways, just feeling like a functioning human being again is its own bliss. Today, after being absolutely miserable for the past 3 days, just being able to get changed out of my pajamas and go out for breakfast was a monumental victory. And I'm still not feeling fantastic by any means, I'm just feeling functional.
Finally starting to feel better from this virus, though, has also coincided with me starting to feel better about things in general. The past few months have been kind of crappy, and today it really hit me that the reason I probably got SO sick (like 7 days or so of feeling kind of bad, followed by a solid 3 or 4 days of feeling and looking like death warmed over) is because I've been allowing stress to creep into every corner of my life.
Let me back up. I am a naturally anxious and nervous person, and I come by it honestly. The women in my life are ALL worriers and in love of control. I can't stand situations that I can't exert control over, but a lot of curveballs have come my way and I simply don't have any proverbial horses in the race...I just have to wait and see how everything all plays out. After about a solid month of random things happening to stress me out, and feeling like I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop, it's no wonder I got so ridiculously sick.
What was I stressed about? Well, over the course of just a month, I discovered that I'll eventually be losing my job. I'm so blessed and lucky that I have until the end of next summer to truly worry about it, but previous to getting all the final details, we were all on pins and needles wondering just when our jobs would end. Would it be in a month? 2 weeks? At the end of the year? The sense of not knowing killed almost all of us (and I can speak for nearly everyone at work since this was such a hot topic of discussion!) And once we found out we have over 9 months, we were relieved, but still, only to a point. Thinking about going through the job process again, interviewing, starting all over....that just sucks. It's been in the back of my mind for awhile now, how life next year will be totally different, at least in the employment area.
I mentioned in the previous post that I had a lot of health tests done recently. Luckily, my bills came nowhere near the $21,000 or so I dreamed I owed, but dealing with what I owe versus when I hit my deductible and how much co-insurance I need to pay has been annoying me on a pretty consistent basis all the same. Again, I am SO blessed in the scheme of things that I have insurance and I don't owe exactly what the claims would be if I just strolled in off the streets and ordered all this blood work for myself, just for fun. But I have to admit, going from doctor to doctor and getting test and after test (especially when some of the tests are kind of invasive and embarrassing) takes it out of you.
There have been other little things too, all adding up to make me much less of a happy person than I typically am. I won't say I've been hugely grumpy, just more bummed lately. We all go through our personal series of peaks and valleys, and this was definitely a valley. I see now that the constant stream of worry and upset from mid-September onward contributed to this knock-down-drag-out cold virus.
And so today, by feeling better from the virus, I resolved to feel better from the worry too. And I know that sounds as cheesy as can be. But I just feel so happy not to be confined to the bed, going through boxes of kleenex in a matter of hours and trying to stay awake to watch The Big Bang Theory on TV, that I'm running with this feeling and don't want to put a damper on it by starting to lapse back into worry and stress.
A few other things are making me exquisitely happy too:
~I got the iPhone 5!!! Woot woot. It came yesterday, about an hour after I was sent home from my boss, who took one look at me and said "What are you doing here?" It's embarrassing to admit that this is my first ever smart phone. My friend Nicole got one a few weeks ago and she warned me that it would change my life and I'd wonder what I ever did without one. Well, it's been just a little bit over a day and I'm already loving it!
~Because of the new iPhone, I've already taken wayyyy more photos over the course of a day than I have almost all year. Previously, I was confined to taking my bulky camera around everywhere when I wanted to take photos, so those occasions were reduced to big parties and events. Now, I'm taking a constant stream of photos and posting them to Instagram, which I am officially obsessed with! The iphone camera is super high quality and has photo editing programs right there on the phone, so it's so easy for me to take photos whenever I want. I'm looking forward to having a camera to chronicle a lot more of everyday life, which is what Instagram seems to be all about. Yay for the random moments!
~I am in love with the new show Nashville. I am a HUGE Connie Britton fan, but not much of a country music fan at all. However, this show is so amazing that I might actually be starting to enjoy country music! I love, love, love it and I miiiiiight have re-watched the pilot episode about 3 times. What of it?
~I found out that one of my bestest friends in the whole world is coming home! My lovely friend Meredith and her family are moving home from Texas in a few months. Cue your favorite Motown tune and start dancing around your house! (or am I the only one who spontaneously cuts a rug to oldies?) I am so thrilled to go back to having Meredith in my own back yard again, as opposed to miles away in Texas. Bonus: she asked me to fly down there with her in a few months to help pack up a few things, then drive with her and her son from Texas to Ohio! This will easily be one of the best road trips ever (and most hilarious.)
~Lastly, we are moving into the holiday season. I feel like I really need this. Since summer, 2012 has been kind of a bummer year for my family. Lots of sad situations happening, random trips to the hospital being taken, and just generally more bad news than good news. I want to festoon my house in Christmas Glitz, blast "A Motown Christmas" (only the best Christmas album ever...download it, and promptly.) make lots of Christmas treats and send this year merrily on its way out.
But "Merrily" is key. I'm shedding the extra stress (or at least trying to!) and aiming to make the next 10 or so weeks of 2012 much happier ones than the past several months have been. Also, I hereby resolve to make my future blog posts way shorter than this one!!!
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