Glass more than half full

The past few monhts have been a bit of an emotional battle for me. Normally I keep a pretty good handle on myself and don't let things get the better of me. But the past 6 months have been pretty tough. About a week ago I went for my employee health checkup. It's compulsary once every 3 years, and then every other year once you reach 50. This was a bit of a celebtation event as it was the last time I would qualify for the "3 year" cycle. The health test itself is a pretty straight forward affair, a number of blood tests and then a measured exercise routine. The exercise part was a bit of fun. I have quite a low pulse rate and it often screws up condition measuring machines which have a built-in base line. This turned out to be the case and the nurse had to make up some results just to get the machine to register me. A bit meaningless but better that way than the other.

The physical bits dealt with, we took some time to examine my mental and emotional health. That was my main motivation for going. Things haven't been sitting quite right and I don't want to place that kind of burden on those at home or on my work colleagues. That seemed even more stressful. So telling it like it is to a neutral third party was a safe option and it gave me the chance to make some sense out of what I was feeling by saying the words out loud. A bit of self therapy.

I'm struggling to deal with my workload at present. It's not because I currently have a whole lot to do, I should be able to handle this lot in my sleep. But a few months back I was incredibly busy and I don't think I have had the time to properly organise that load in my head. Which means that now the smallest item struggles to find space. Everything is just kind of "in there", making it difficult to recall items of information when I need them.

I've had a follow-up meeting with a specialist in these things. I'm trying to keep an open mind about our meetings and to keep in mind that I'm probably not in the best condition to objectively absorb eveything he says. Honestly, it just felt like he was putting even more of a load onto me.

One thing which did come up was a feeling of a loss of personality and, in turn, what exactly defines our personality. I feel at times as though I am living someone else's life. It's not my life but then I don't know exactly what my life is. Which makes me a little lost as a person. Don't get me wrong, it's not a miserable life, it just doesn't feel like mine. For 45 years I knew exactly what I was doing, 24 hours of the day. That shaped my emotions, by actions, my behaviour and, as a result, my personality. I knew who I was from what I did.

Then I moved to Sweden and I lost all of those securities in life. I didn't know what I was doing and that gave rise to emotions I hadn't had very much experience with. I also, with a new language, didn't have the ability to express these new emotions in the correct way. One cannot underestimate how important the ability to communicate correctly shapes who we are. It shapes how we are preceived by others and that can change how we feel about ourselves.

When I started working solo on this large project at work, it gave me a chance to show my professional colleagues exactly what I was capable of achieving. To show them who I was. You aren't supposed to say that you are your job, but when it's one of the few things that you have control over then it tends to become exactly that. I think I have taken this task so that my new colleagues in Sweden can see me as my colleagues in New Zealand saw me. We shouldn't need the approval of others in order to feel whole, but the reality is that we all seek that. No one wants to be seen in a bad light by others. Anyway, the chance to finally be seen as an equal has come with a lot of self-imposed pressure, which has led me to where I find myself today. I sleep maybe 4 hours a night, have uncomfortable dreams at best, struggle to hold focus during the day (especially during conversations) and tend to keep myself to myself. All things which need to change. That's not who I once was. I know all of that, and I know what I need to do. It's finding the energy and motivation to take the first step which is proving to be elusive. This persona has built up slowly over the past 5 years and is partially ingrained in me now. So it's no easy shift. I think that the first step is to force myself to do a bit of internal housekeeping, to clear a bit of space in there for me to start organising. I think that once I can get that clear space I can start emptying out the constantly overflowing glass. And maybe I might even become a nice person to live with. I can think of a couple of people who deserve that.