My floors, they are teh awesome now.

Last weekend I had a plan.  I would spend that weekend getting a big home improvement project completed.  Then I’d spend this last week getting caught up on my work and blogging, so I could take this weekend and Monday through Wednesday of next week off to do a personal retreat.  The idea was to deal with my increasing level of burnout and come back refreshed and refocused.

My daughter got sick Sunday, which meant I had to take Monday off from work to stay home with her.  Tuesday morning, we got word that my husband Chris’ grandma had passed on.  So most of Tuesday was spent running my daughter to the doctor’s appointment, keeping a grieving Chris busy/distracted, and preparing to have houseguests (his parents were coming in from Tucson).

Wednesday I spent at work, frantically preparing to pass off my daily responsibilities to my coworkers for the next week and making travel arrangements.  Thursday, I had one last client meeting before traveling to Danville/Stanford, Kentucky for the visitation, where I spent the evening wrangling two bored kids till 10:30 pm.

The French Family: Back in Black. And lavender. But mostly black.

Friday was the funeral, burial and funeral meal.  I caught a quick nap after the meal, before driving back to Indiana.  Saturday morning I had breakfast with a friend, and it all caught up with me at once: sick kid + constant running + already low on internal resources = getting so sick that I literally slept the entire day.  I laid down at about 11 am and aside from getting up briefly to take some Nyquil and eat a bratwurst, I was out till 7:30 this morning.

Today, the kids are arguing while the Wii is playing full blast, and my father-in-law is talking on the phone so loudly that I think surely, if the person on the other end is in the same area code, she can hear him without using the phone.  I tried going into my bedroom and shutting the door to write, but my daughter, who has been talking non-stop for six hours, followed me before I got two sentences complete.

in reality, I'm left-handed, but this was the only way I could take the picture.

So now I’m writing, longhand, from the front seat of my truck.  It’s started to rain a bit, and flocks of geese are honking overhead as they make their way north for the warmer months.  The field that is my next door neighbor sits fallow and quiet for now.

Between the rain and the geese and the birds, it’s not that much quieter out here, I suppose.  But it’s a different kind of noise.  I don’t feel like I need to attempt to tune in to the rain in case it asks me something.  The geese are noisy, but they make no demands of my attention.

I’ve been thinking about attention a lot lately.  My attention can’t be a gift if it’s not freely given.  It can’t be a resource if I’m not allowed to conserve it.

I’ve recently been struggling to balance being responsive to other people while also being responsive to my own soul and its care.

People will not stop making demands of me.

People will not stop making demands of me.

People will not stop making demands of me.

So the answer to “how do I balance my external and internal responsibilities?” is not going to be “take care of myself when others stop wanting anything from me.”

It’s not going to be ditching my family and other relationships and responsibilities altogether to go “find myself.”

It’s probably going to be lovingly, compassionately telling people “no” a lot more often.

It may even be lovingly, compassionately telling people “Hell, no” from time to time. (Because some people seem to have a really hard time hearing just plain “no.”)

It may mean backing away from people who won’t take a loving “No” for an answer.

Because no one benefits from my soul walking around half-starved and empty.  And there are some really important yes’s I’m not getting around to, because first come, first served stinks as a methodology for prioritization.

img courtesy yohanl on sxc

All of these ponderings about mental health got me thinking about the way we talk about mental health.   When you look at the conversations and stories out there on the social web about physical health, you see people talking about managing a specific physical ailment, but you also see many people talking about living a lifestyle that promotes physical fitness.

What I don’t see as much in conversations and stories about mental health, are stories about living a lifestyle committed to mental wellness.  I see stories about stigmas, and medications, and care plans.  It’s almost as if, when it comes to our mental health, we’re all a bunch of septuagenarians, complaining about our various ailments and medications and doctors.

I would love to see a shift in the way we talk about mental health, in the real world and online.   Instead of talking about how sick you are, to talk about how functional you are.   What if we charted our  progress in mental and emotional wellness the same way some people chart physical wellness goals and progress?

Because honestly, some of the most creative, productive people I know have some form of mental illness: depression, bipolar, addictions or anxiety.  Some of these people are more functional than most people whose (unaddressed) dysfunctions aren’t at DSM-IV diagnosable levels, because they’ve made taking care of their mental health a priority.

What if we promoted a culture of mental wellness online?  What would that look like?