In these coding posts, I usually summarize everything I've learned this week in my coding journey and where I'm heading next. This week, however, I did not code at all and I wanted to talk about the reasons why this happened, and how I'm going to recover from this week's failure.
A few weeks ago, I had the Nexplanon birth control implant removed from my arm, as it was causing me to have some bad side effects. Overall, I do feel better in a lot of ways, however, the big hormone shift that my body has gone through has triggered some anxiety and depression. This is considered normal and everything should go back to normal once my body has settled down. In the meantime, however, I have been dealing with not sleeping for more than three or four hours every night, I cannot focus on anything for an extended period of time and my brain will not be quiet.
I also have started to see a slip in keeping things clean around the house and taking care of myself personally. These are all symptoms of depression and anxiety.
Now, as you all know, I struggle with my mental health sometimes and I have gone through a long journey to figure out the things I need to do to make myself better. So, instead of coding, I have been focusing on getting those things done instead.
This week I've:
Cleaned my entire house
Gotten all of my laundry done
Cleaned out my car
Started cooking healthy meals instead of eating out or filling myself with tons of sweets.
Gotten back up to working out three times a week
Connected with old friends and coworkers that I've missed during this pandemic
I know a lot of these things may seem simple, but getting all of these things done has helped my mental health a lot and I think that within the next week or two, that depression will fall away and I will feel like myself again.
I have thought about this a lot, and I have decided that I will restart my challenge next Monday. Restarting might sound crazy, but I feel like a fresh start is exactly what I need. I need to rearrange my daily routine and make sure that all of the things I am working on outside of my 8-5 have a place on my schedule each day so I can accomplish my goals in a more organized fashion. I will be working on figuring out that routine for the rest of the week.
Have any of you hit this kind of roadblock before? How did you recover? Do you have any advice for my going forward?