February 2021
Hello everyone! It’s the end of February already, which means I’m back with a monthly wrap-up. The shortest month of the year really felt long to me. That being said, I’m still surprised it’s almost March!
I’ve been very much in my own head this month. I feel like it’s mostly because this is the peak of my seasonal depression, but there are definitely other factors that have contributed to this little bubble I’ve put myself in. Despite not really paying attention to the outside world, I’ve celebrated some mini accomplishments this month in my own life, and that’s something to be happy about! Let’s get into how February has been for me…
My Week Off
Earlier in the month, I took a week off from work. I woke up one morning and thought to myself, “I don’t want to go to work today.” I NEVER think that (I honestly really love my job), so that’s when I decided I needed a break. The last time I had a week off was for my honeymoon in 2019!
I planned on being very productive during my week off, but in true Mary fashion, that did not happen. Sure, I went to the dentist, got a haircut, and talked to my doctor, but that’s about as far as I got productivity wise. Instead, I did my usual chores and laid around the house. It was rejuvenating!
By the time the weekend rolled around on my week off, I was ready to go back to work. I missed my coworkers and I missed my regulars, and I really wanted to do something outside of the house. I’m fortunate that I have a job in general during this pandemic, and I’m fortunate that I don’t have to full-on quarantine because of the nature of my job. ADHD and cabin fever do not mix well!
Hopefully I’ll be able to take another week off soon. I’m very grateful that I work somewhere where the management cares about mental health, so I’m sure as soon as I start getting burnt out again, they’ll tell me to stay home!
Looking at Life a Little Differently
My coworker, as you all may or may not know, died at the end of January. My week off coincided with his funeral, so I went to Cincinnati with my husband and best friend/coworker to say goodbye for the last time. It was comforting to know how many lives he touched, and hearing about how great of a man he was from the people that loved him most really gave me the closure I needed to properly say goodbye.
I have been thinking back on his life this whole month and wondering if there was anything any one of us could have done for him to make his life easier while he was here. After all, he made life easier for everyone he came into contact with. Of course, things happen for a reason, and maybe it was simply just his time to go. Coming to that conclusion over time was hard, but needed.
Reading the goodbyes his friends and family left on his Facebook page made me think long and hard about how I live my life, and how I can make the most of it. I genuinely think that stress played a part in his death. I knew only what he shared with me when it comes to his life outside of work, but I knew he was constantly pressured by his own doubts and fears. That amount of stress couldn’t have been good for him both mentally and physically.
I don’t want to get into the specifics of his life out of respect for his family and his legacy, but what I will say is that he put everyone and everything before himself and that’s something that I admired most about him. We had our arguments, but I knew I could count on him in any situation I found myself in. I’d like to think that he saw me like a little sister, and I genuinely loved him more that he could ever know.
Knowing how much weight was on his shoulders makes my heart ache. He didn’t like sharing much about his personal life, and I never pressed him about it. I did all I could to show him that I cared about him while he was here, and that gives me comfort now that he’s gone.
Moving forward, I think I’ll look at my own stress and my own way of coping with it differently. His passing left a lot of his friends and family with the sense of failure (assuming that they feel like I feel, anyway), but I think now that we’ve had time to process and understand what happened, we can look at his passing in a new way.
Celebrating his life, to me, means that I’ll take my own struggles and my own stress more seriously. I want to make sure that the people around me don’t ever feel like they need to hide their emotions, fears, and stress from me, and I won’t feel like I need to hide my own from the people I love. I feel like I owe it to his memory to be better about my own mental health.
Is It Time For Baby G?
In 2019, I decided that my 2020 goals would be to get my license and to start planning for Future Baby G. Obviously, 2020 did not go the way anyone thought it would, and I ended up forgoing my original plans for the year once I realized that this pandemic wasn’t going to end quite as fast as we thought.
I did get my temporary license in late 2020, but planning for a baby would have to go on the back burner until we heard more news about the Coronavirus numbers going down and vaccines coming up. Well, now that all of that is starting to happen, the door has opened back up for family planning, and Matt and I have started taking the steps to start trying for a baby!
One thing I wanted to make sure he knew is that I’m not pressed to have a baby right now this instant. After all, I still feel like a baby myself despite being in my late 20s! There’s a lot of personal growth that Matt and I have made both separately and together over 2020, but I am all for even more personal growth before we bring a child into the world.
Planning for a family is something I thought I’d never get the opportunity to do. I had always had it in my mind that I would either get pregnant on accident, or I would simply never get the chance. Now that I’m at the point in my life where having a baby would be a normal-for-my-age-group, joyous occasion, I find myself both extremely worried about the future and very excited for the possibility of my lifelong dream of being a mother coming true.
Don’t get too excited, though: We’re still in the whole “trying to conceive” part of family planning. I still want to buy a house, get my license, and prove that I can be a responsible adult before I even get pregnant. There are many steps on the road to parenthood that both Matt and I need to take, but the possibility of being parents within a year or so is coming closer and closer to reality!
Reconnecting With Friends During a Pandemic
Let’s be honest: how many of us can say we’ve seen our closest friends in person recently? Not very many of us. Staying in touch with people I care about as an adult is already very hard, but now that the pandemic has been going on for so long (almost a year, y’all), I find myself annoyed that I let so many friends go on the backburner for so long.
Matt has made a conscious effort to reconnect and plan out days to either see his friends in person, or to play games online with them once a week. I, on the other hand, will send a couple of texts every few weeks or so and hope that eventually they’ll text back. When they do text back, do I respond immediately? Of course not! I wait a few more weeks and text back!
I think the seasonal/general/pandemic depression has really affected my need for human interaction, causing me to feel dread whenever the opportunity arises. I want to see my friends and hang out with them, but it’s almost anxiety inducing to do so anymore. Thanks to my husband, however, I’ve found myself getting to join him in hanging out with our friends once or twice a week. In turn, it’s got me wanting to see my other friends more!
My friends must miss me as well, because we’ve been talking a lot more. Whether through FaceTime or in person, I’m happy that we’ve all been reaching out to each other recently. I’m hoping that as soon as it’s our turn for the vaccine, I’ll be able to get it and we’ll be able to see our friends in person way more often!
Music Obsessions
While I’ve not been listening to a lot of new music recently, I have been listening to music more than last month. The Midnight came out with a new track for International Pizza Day (No, really), Crywolf and Roniit came out with a new cover for Valentine’s Day, and I’ve been obsessed with TikToks featuring Cardi B’s new song, “Up”.
On this month’s playlist, I’ve thrown in two out of three of the above (the Midnight’s track is only available right now through the link above, unfortunately) as well as songs that I forgot I liked.
The playlist starts with a song that reminds me of my coworker who passed; he didn’t like the song very much, and on one of the first shifts we worked together, he bitched about the song the entire four minutes and fifteen seconds he had to suffer through it. It’s honestly one of my favorite memories of him because even when he was complaining, he still managed to make all of us laugh.
I also threw in some Daft Punk because on this day, the day I’ve posted this lovely post, the duo has officially called it quits. Yes, I know. It’s tragic. Their career spanned over 20 years! I’d say they did a great job ending on a high note, but when haven’t they been at their best? Daft Punk is one of those groups that nails it with every single, every record. Everything they touch turns to gold, and I hope that the two of them continue to make and produce music just as amazing apart as they did together.
That’s it for February! I can appreciate the self-reflection and the break time I allowed myself to have despite the length of time I had to do it. The month may be short, but I made sure to make my February not as awful as it could’ve been! To me, that’s an accomplishment.
If you’re interested in keeping up with my blog, feel free to follow me on Twitter! I post each blog there every Monday, and you get the added bonus of ridiculous memes and Maryisims throughout the rest of the week.
I’ve also created a Ko-fi for people who would like to contribute to the “Mary Writes a Novel” fund. There’s not a lot going on on the page, but you can still donate if you’d like! Each tip I get will go straight to self-publishing my novel (once it’s done, of course).
This March, I plan on bringing you more creative writing. So, look forward to that next post! See you there!
