Been a while...

It's been a bit since I last posted something here. Not much has changed, except maybe my motivation. 

Ugh, motivation. What I am seriously lacking as of late. 

Dictionary.com defines motivation as "the act or an instance of motivating, or providing with a reason to act in a certain way" and "the state or condition of being motivated".  As of late, my motivation seems to come in fits and starts, with one day I am motivated to do something and push myself to do it, while the next day, I just want to curl up in bed and sleep.  It is a constant battle to motivate myself and not let the exhaustion overwhelm me.

Some people may look at me and think, "What are you whining about? You're a stay-at-home Mom. You're just lazy! You have all the time in the world when your kids are at school to get things done, you just choose not to." 

Actually, the sheer aggravation I have at not getting things done should be enough to push that motivation into the red zone, but those feelings are in direct competition with the overwhelm of knowing how much I have to do and how much time I need to catch up with myself. 

This is what happens when life gets out of control. People who work outside the home know the scenerio quite well - your boss comes and gives you an project and a deadline to get it done. You have co-workers that you have helped with their projects before, but when you ask them for help, they remind you that they have their own work to do, and if you couldn't have handled the job, you shouldn't have accepted it. So now you know that this you're going to do 99% of the work. But you also have other jobs that need to get done. So, you try to get both things done at once. Then, your boss's boss comes and asks you to do another favor, because your reputation of being a reliable person is known around the office. So now, you have your original job, plus your boss's project, then this new project. Sure, you can do it! You are a go-getter! You like to do things for people to make them happy. Not a problem at all. 

Then, your car breaks down. You don't plan for this. You've done everything you thought you were supposed to to make sure your car was in working order - you had the oil changed, you have the brakes done, you even make sure you keep on top of those tire rotations. But suddenly - poof - no car. And no way of getting to work. 

You call and ask some of the people you work with to give you a lift, but they can't because you don't really live on their way into work and they have so much to do, they can't be late themselves. Oh, and the mechanic tells you that it will be several days before the part comes in and so sorry for the inconvenience. 

You think that you will be okay, since you've been doing okay until then, juggling all the balls in the air so perfectly. But it just takes that one dropped ball to set the whole thing off balance. Now you are dropping balls left and right. You go chasing after the balls, but every time you go to pick one up, it just ends up bouncing off your foot. They are slippery, bouncy little buggers. 

You finally get them all picked up, and you realize that you have forgotten how to juggle. 

You get back to work, and realize that no matter what you do, you can't seem to catch up. Deadlines approach, people get angry, and you know you are working so hard, but it just isn't hard enough. You throw the balls up in the air, hoping magically, you remember how to juggle, but all that happens in the balls come smashing down on your head. 

So, you just stop.

You don't move. 

You just stop doing. 

The work doesn't stop coming, but you just stop doing it. 

There isn't enough motivation anymore for you to keep getting bashed on the head.

This is what happened to me. Though it wasn't my car, but my own body. It decided to stop working the way it was supposed to. Although I was diagnosed almost 14 years ago, last year, the autoimmune disease I battle with, Hashimoto's Thyroiditis (simply described as the body seeing the thyroid gland as an invading entity that needs to be destroyed), decided to get the make juggling all the balls impossible for me. 

I can't say that I have had great treatment for my Hashi's (as it is nicknamed) all these years, but it was at least somewhat managed. I could function. I could get out of bed in the morning and get things done. At one time, I was told I was actually a gifted educator. But then little things I should have seen as warning signs I didn't see, like my hair become more brittle again, my weight increasing even though my diet and exercise hadn't changed, my thoughts getting harder to formulate and my sleep becoming less and less restful. These were subtle things that I didn't notice until one day, my heart rate went through the roof and I landed in the ER. From then on, it's been one battle after another to get things regulated. And my "car" has spent more time with doctors than I have since I was pregnant.

Why now? I have my theories, but in reality, no one ever knows with things like this. With Hashi's, you can swing from a hypo to a hyper state, back and forth without warning. There can be dietary causes, environmental causes, drug interactions, and the list goes on and on and on. 

I think a lot had to do with a surgery on one of my hands to deal with a near amputation I suffered in my teens from a freak accident. For what ever reason, the surgery sent my body into a tail spin. The medication I take to help regulate my Hashi's stopped working correctly, and the stress on my body to heal from such an extensive surgery only compounded things.   

So, here I am, almost 10 months after the surgery, and I can't seem to get the figurative car out of park. I look around me and I see half-finished projects, partially folded baskets of laundry, dishes piled in the sink, floors that need to be mopped, papers that need to be shredded, children that need my attention and a husband who longs to have a conversation that I don't fall asleep during. 

I have a new MD, one who looks at the whole person versus just one blood test (there are SEVERAL that need to be done, but this is something I have learned recently in my desperate need to find something to change the current status quo). I am on better medication to help my body to figure out what it needs to be doing.

And I look at all of these things like I am looking outside myself. I want to yell and scream at that person who just stands there, grasping at some level of motivation but not finding any. I tell myself all the time that I am not letting this malfunction in my body's programming to take away who I am, but right now, I am waving the white flag. I know it's a process, that there are no quick fixes, no band-aids (despite what uneducated people try to spew) and even when my body starts doing what it is supposed to, there is going to be a lot of changes that need to happen.

Which comes back to the whole thing that started this blog post: motivation.

So even when things get back in balance, where do I find the ability to juggle those balls again? I know I need to start small, with just one or two, but even that seems hard to imagine right now. 

If you have read this, then you realize that I at least found motivation to do one thing:

I wrote a new post. 

For more information on Hashimoto's, visit Hypothyroid Mom at http://hypothyroidmom.com/ and About.com Thyroid Site at http://thyroid.about.com/