Managing Anxiety During A Plague

Hello Dear Readers. I hope your week has been a good one.

Managing anxiety has become a far more pressing issue in the past couple months than usual. Anxiety hits everybody differently, but for me I can get insomnia, and/or completely lose my appetite, and/or get a headache because I've hyper-focused on something and forgot to drink water, and any combination of these things will absolutely screw me up worse if I don't take care of myself.

I have a plan written on my white board that says the following:

"If you feel like everything is going wrong, or you can't sleep, or your head hurts, or your chest is tight, or your stomach feels like lead, remember to do three things:
1) Drink water - a full glass!
2) Eat something green or lean protein
3) Take a nap, Nerd!
If you've just done 1, do 2 and then 3. If you've just done 2, do 1 and then 3. If you've just woken up from 3, do 1 and then 2. You are more than your anxiety, and you are more than what is posted on your resume. Breathe."

Living during a time of Plague and also Spring is not great for me. Spring and Fall are prime times for me to get sick, and it's usually a throat/upper respiratory cold, which makes the prospect of getting sick that much more anxiety-inducing. I would prefer to not have to play a game of "Regular Spring Cold, or Plague", just because I came home from running an errand, and then a couple days later started sneezing/coughing. I have a mask, but the amount of people blithely running about without one, so convinced of their superiority that they will be immune to Rona's pull, is irksome. I go out as little as possible in response, and manage my anxiety about going outside to run errands as best as I can when I go out to get supplies.

I hope, Dear Readers, that if you are experiencing anxiety, that you are finding healthy ways to manage it. I hope that the world acquires a new normal that is healthier for everybody, but in the meantime, remember to wash your hands and stay safe.

-A.M.W.

Update on the Tail End of Stay At Home

Happy Tuesday, Dear Readers. I hope you all had a good week, and a good time with the prompts I provided for creative writing during the last five weeks. Time to go back to regularly scheduled programming, and since I haven't posted a real update in the past five weeks, I will use today's blog to catch up.

Classes have been going well. I signed up for two more grant writing classes, and a project management class. All of the classes are self-paced, and I spent the time to download all the reading material for each class. I downloaded everything first so that I don't have to log in to the online classroom in order to study, and so far I have enjoyed the material.

Job hunting is mostly the same, though I have noticed a significant jump in applicants via LinkedIn for remote positions, which is in no way surprising. I am waiting for restrictions to ease in my county before contacting my agency to ask if the positions I interviewed for prior to lock-down are still interested in hiring me. In the meantime, I have applied to many positions, some of which let me know they were happy to get my application and resume, but they were freezing hiring until further notice.

I took some time at the beginning of quarantine to hand-sew myself a mask, and then a headband to go with it. The headband has buttons sewed onto it, for the elastic of the mask to loop on to, and works well. I wear glasses, and having both the stems of glasses and elastic loops was proving to be too much pressure on the cartilage-filled skin-ridges that help me hear. I also made a mask and headband set which I sent to my sister, who also wears glasses, so that she could be more comfortable when she went out.

I used to consume a lot of news, but since the Stay At Home order, and everything that has happened in the last month-and-a-half (and I had to check a calendar to make sure it has only been a month-and-a-half, because Yikes), I had to cut down on how many hours I spent consuming news for my own mental well-being. I have invested the time into my classes and some de-stressing measures, to keep me on an even keel.

That is the basic round-up for me, Dear Readers. I hope you have a good week!

-A.M.W.