Day off

I really had to take a day off.

Let me explain. With my bouts of fatigue lately, it's a nightmare to function. I get tired very fast, then I keep dozing on and off for hours. It's not restful sleep though. When I wake up I'm even more tired than when I started dozing off. The more I sleep/don't sleep the more tired I am. They re-scheduled my dr. appointment about that from the 4th of August to the 25th of August, so... nothing I can do about it.

To give  you an example of how my usual day goes by.

I wake up anywhere between 4 and 5 am. Tired. That is when I don't wake up at 3 am. I need sometimes up to 2 hours and a pot of coffee before I can function.

I do a little bit of kitchen clean-up then start working on a tutorial or a piece of jewelry or some test I'm doing. About 2-3 hours pass. It's around 11 am now. I am tired. If I happen to sit, that's it. I fall asleep. If I don't sit, I'll still fall asleep around 1 pm at the latest.

The rest of the afternoon goes by with me trying to do something - anything - between bouts of unrestful sleep. If there is bad weather nearby, the sleep is even more unrestful as I will wake up every half an hour due to pain, I'll shift around then narcolepsy again.

I might, in between so called naps, finish a piece, or finish editing a tutorial. What you have to think is that for about 20-30 minutes of tutorial I usually work for at least 4 hours. What you see is the final product. You don't see the real time work, the waiting between sessions of baking, the sanding and buffing and varnishing I do off camera. You don't see the hours spent editing and writing the subtitles.

And eat something. I got to the point that I don't cook. My menu usually consists of some fruit (usually mango or watermelon), whole-wheat bread dipped in olive oil with cheese or hummus. I do drink 2 glasses of protein powder a day, take supplements, and all that, so no, my diet isn't deficient.  That got run by my dr. after my vit D levels came back abysmally low, even if I take 5,000 UI a day. So yes, they don't know what is wrong with me. It is possible that after a dozen more tests and imaging they might figure it out. Maybe. I'm telling you, life-time effects of chemo and, generally, cancer treatment can be a bitch.

Now, because of that, there are pieces of jewelry all over the place. Some are finished, but I didn't get to package them ready for shipping. Some (about 2/3 of it) are not - they need stringing, or resin, or one more piece to complete a necklace, etc.  The fact that I had two episodes of extreme fatigue in the past three months, one lasting about 10 days the other 1 week, didn't help, it put me behind horribly.

On top of that, I have a mild OCD about cleanliness. So when the house is not tidy, it stressed me out real bad.

No, this didn't start once I started making tutorials. It actually got better. Having a focus really helped. After my health deteriorated too much for me to be able to do any more gardening, life was getting really boring. I mean, one can only watch so many documentaries, especially when one sleeps during 9 out of 10 of those documentaries.

Starting again on the path of creating things helped me tremendously fight off the fatigue and be able to have a more normal and busy life.

Today I woke  up at 5. I didn't do any tutorials, or any jewelry work yet, but I managed to clean my workspace, rearrange the polymer clay in a huge folder with file protectors. Got laundry done, cleaned about half of the kitchen, organized about half the pieces laying around. I had several bags of various items I had purchased in the last week that were laying around, took care of those. Did laundry. I packaged a dozen pieces ready to ship. Now I'm fixing to vacuum. Then hopefully I still will have some energy left to finish a few pieces and package others. Hopefully once the house looks nice and tidy again and I catch up on stuff. And be able to have a restful sleep.

So I will stop writing now, as I sat too long and I start feeling like dozing off. I need to finish cleaning. I might update later.

But if you don't see any tutorials anywhere today, that's why. I'm trying to catch up.