Inertia

Funny thing about energy is that is that it's lot like money --  it takes energy to make energy, and no one ever has as much energy as they want. I have been feeling particularly inert this week.  Not wanting to really move off of the couch, despite the fact that there is nothing on TV to watch, I have come home from work the last two days utterly exhausted and wanting nothing more than the quiet respite of my bed.   

I never really know how to get over these period of inertia; they are part fatigue -- part apathy -- part something else I can't quite explain.  I am sure I could rest more, eat better, exercise more, etc. etc. but really, who has the energy to even try to be healthy, even if doing so would make you feel better?  This particular but of inertia I think is a direct result of the season and the Season, i.e. the Holidays and the winter.  Lets be honest, no matter how much I prepare for the Holidays, they are always an emotional whirlwind.  Whether it is the year end crunch at work, or family members stressing you out, or the packing to visit said family members, or the shopping and gift-exchanging with these family members . . . . (or friends - I suppose some people have friends that cause them stress.  Personally, if you are not related to me you do not get the privilege of making my stressed out.  Sorry!) . . . in any case it is emotionally draining and physically exhausting marathon of days between mid-November to mid-January.  Couple that with the fact that this Holiday season is always in the darkest part of Winter -- a time when one's body is already depleted of its much needed energizing Vitamin D -- and  you have my present state of inertia.    I feel otherwise lost adrift . . . displaced for my usual regimen and my calendar newly empty after weeks of planned events.  I think the boundlessness of everything is part of the problem -- if nothing urgently calls you in a particular direction, inertia keeps you where you are.

I suppose the holistic approach would be to honor that my body is taking time to decompress and reboot; to accept where I am and that I need some down time.  But every year I feel like I fight this phase, or I have the need to give lip service to the fight.  In my heart I want to fight it.  I want to spring into the New Year with vigor and stamina and conquer the world.   I do not like thinking that I need to emotionally recharge from a (truth be told) fairly painless Holiday.   I do not like falling asleep at 9pm.  And I mostly do not like that I can barely muster the strength to vent about such inertia on a blog post.  Truth be told though, this week I would rather sit in a blob of nothingness and watch a million episodes of "House Hunters" or some other rubbish on TV, while drifting in and out of consciousness, than pretty much anything else.  And I don't know if I buy it -- is this inertia really a "shutting down" from last year's overexertion, or is it a "rebooting" in an attempt to prepare for this year?  Or is that the same thing?  And is this whole mental exercise the kind of twisted logic and thinking that is sending my mind and body into a state where they are hiding under the proverbial rock?  Am I secretly hoping that if I act like an ostrich, and keep my head in the sand long enough, I will neither have to deal with the leftovers from last year, nor really have time to "prepare" for this year -- I will just have to run full steam ahead without forethought or preparation? 

I am not sure there is a point to this post.  It is more a confession out loud that I do not know where I will find the energy to get myself re-energized because this is certainly a phase that will have to pass eventually.  When, and where, will the energy come from to allow me to recommit in the New Year to all of the good things that I was doing in the old year; to brush off the cobwebs of my sleepy, sun-deprived mind and get back into work and life; and to wake up enough to enjoy the quietness of these remaining weeks of winter, before the frantic chaos of spring cleaning rolls around?  I do not know.

So, at least for night, I am surrendering to this inertia and am going to go see what's on TV.

Namaste,
~Clare