Daily Energy

Daily Energy


I’ve been thinking about this a lot going through my first week of work and especially through my first weekend between work weeks. For once, I felt like the slow kid in class, and it did not feel good at all. I went from Honors College to barely comprehending six hours of information spread out over seven and a half hours with quizzes and questions sprinkled in. I was the one asking most of the questions. One thing I found out didn’t help is when the instructor decided to pull up the different screen with every question and show us in the “actual website” we would be using where the answer to the question would be. Usually, this would be very helpful indeed! Why didn’t it help me? I have no idea!

Everyone starts with a base rate of energy. This is the energy they have without doing anything. Before they shower, go to work, walk even, they have an energy level. This is affected by how you slept the night before, what you ate, etc. I did everything I could to keep my energy levels up this entire last week, and Friday night came, and I crashed. Saturday, I woke up and my body was in pain from head to toe. I moved in and out of sleep like an amphibian moves between land and water. I don’t know what happened, but it was like I could not watch more than two episodes of TV before my eyes drooped and I needed sleep again. Other screens were okay, but still felt sleepy after about the same period of time. I asked one of my support groups, and they said that I could be headed into burnout… after months of doing nothing and a week of information???

My base energy had been low, but I raised it up this week. I did things I hadn’t done for more than three months without a nap afterwards. Monday was work, sleep, dinner, sleep, phone, sleep, work Tuesday. It got better throughout the week, but man, it is a steep learning curve! It helped that I had reviewed the application online before the interview so I knew the kinds of documents they were looking for in order to verify a person and what information they needed for the application and to qualify for the program itself, but that was still about 5% of the information we went over, and we went over it in a lot more depth!

Sorry, I keep getting sidetracked from my original thought process. I have a naturally low energy base. My autistic masking had me burning my candle at both ends to raise it up to meet other people. Because of my FND, my physicality went from a physical bar of 100 units (whereas my husband’s is like 1000 units) to 10. I don’t know any other way to explain it. I’ve tried explaining it a dozen different ways to no avail. It’s not that I’m out of shape. It is literally that my body has decided to refuse to produce energy anymore. My stamina went from a “normal” person’s to “you can do two things outside of laying in bed, and yes, taking a shower counts as one of them.”

I want to do well at this job. I know I’m going to love this job even though it’s going to push my comfort zone. I love connecting people to resources, and that’s exactly what this job is trying to do! I just hope and pray that my body and mind are up for the challenges ahead!

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