Week 4…or Month One…or Week 5…or Lessons in Feeding Yourself

I had intentions of going back through my journal to pick out all the things I didn’t get to during my weekly check-ins. Framily, there are a lot of them. I had this idea that I would just hit the high points once a week and do a better job of the rest of it around the 23^rd.

Except schedules don’t really work that way. I don’t magically have more time once a month than I do once a week; they are, for all intents and purposes, the same thing. Just because time can be marked differently doesn’t mean it gives any indication that it will behave differently. This should be an obvious revelation (and evidenced by the fact that if everything goes perfectly – which it won’t – this recap will still be days late) …

In fact, things did not go as planned – or rather, they went exactly as I should have planned and didn’t. I knew when I began this post nearly a week ago that I had intentions of being exactly where I am right now – in bed, next to my husband, occupying myself while he watches the F1Dutch Grand Prix. It is Labor Day weekend, and I knew I was coming home. Because I knew I was coming home, I knew that I was going to my dead level best to get myself worked ahead so that I would feel zero compulsion to work this weekend unless moments like this presented itself. 

For those of you who don’t know, my husband and I really like spending time together, but we don’t necessarily like the same things. We like the same spaces, but not the same stuff. We have created quite a fine flow of doing different stuff in the same place and the same time – hence he’s watching F1 while I am writing this post. 

Now, it is nearly impossible for me to tell you in real-time what I was going to tell you last week. But I think I can do the next best thing – I can give you what I have in reflection. 

Just like my schedule in preparation of coming home, my first month in Knoxville went exactly like I should have expected it to go. But I didn’t expect it because I gave priority to what I wanted instead of what it was. There is an argument to made suggesting that particular method is helpful. Perhaps shooting for what I wanted reduced the difficulty of what was always going to be, and the overall effect was easier. I don’t know. I just know that I set myself up to believe it wouldn’t be as hard as it was and when it was, I was not ready. 

My strategy was to be a realist – obviously moving into the unknown, alone, is going to be hard. Obviously, the environment is going to be different, the work more intense. Obviously. Obviously. But I expect it, I know it, and I know how to adapt, buck up, and get up and go to work. No matter how bad it has ever gotten – and it has been pretty bad – I have always known how to get up and go to work. 

My strategy fell short because my anticipation of hard only focused on the physical. I failed to account for the intangible. Interestingly, I had my first couple of really hard days, and it still didn’t occur to me. I was still willing to chalk it up to homesick, lonely, adjustment. It wasn’t until last weekend while I was working on a particularly hard project that it occurred to me; I am functioning without my partner. 

I have done well with creating a schedule and working the schedule to give me anchor points. These anchor points have allowed me to escape the feeling of overwhelm as well as offer a road map when the world feels unfamiliar. 

However, I underestimated the difficulty of this project. This is not a huge deal. It happens from time to time, especially when the material is new and the background is more complicated than anticipated. This is something I have experience with. The project then takes longer to complete and it requires adjustments in the schedule. Again, not a big deal. My schedule typically has flex in it as these kinds of things happen. However, as I got longer in time and began to run out of flex room, I realized I was bumping into time allotted for other tasks that were not going to wait. I had to make sure there was food in the fridge, and I had to feed myself. 

And there it was. This seemingly small, obvious, normal, task that I am completely capable of breaks me. Not because I cannot – I actually like grocery shopping, and I am a pretty good cook. But because this is not my normal responsibility. Mike does the grocery shopping. Mike does the cooking. Mike makes sure I eat. I am not just alone; I am without my partner.

Let me see if I can explain how these two things are different. When getting ready for this change, I never equated the physical separation with anything other than geography. If Mike and I never saw each other again, nothing about the way we feel would change (a fact life has already proven to us). I am not worried about how this period of life affects feelings, relationship, commitment – none of it. It was just geography. 

So, while I had considered how we love each other, I had not considered how we work together. And that is not nearly as antiseptic as it sounds. The way we work together is a direct reflection of how we love each other. Therefore, when I have to feed myself, I am reminded that he is not there to feed me.

I don’t know if that adequately explains any of this revelation, but I do know that the way I felt it in my body changed a lot for me. I was able to experience all these feelings in a new way with a new understanding. I was able to process them more appropriately. It provided a new clarity that took me through the next week, encouraging me to look at everything with a new sense of wonder. What else had I taken for granted as obvious? What other challenges would benefit from a fresh perspective. Turns out – all of them. There was a compassion that entered into my space that filtered my observations and my interactions. 

Does this mean that my time in Knoxville is going to suddenly be easier? I don’t know. I think it means that I am no longer real concerned about judging it in that way. I think it means I can go back to my original stance – this is what it is. I am exactly where I am supposed to be doing exactly what it is I am supposed to be doing, and it is hard. It was never not going to be hard. It is probably never not going to be hard. And that’s okay. I can do hard things.