(no subject)
First up, I need to apologise to you all. I'm falling behind in reading and commenting on everybody's journals. I will catch up, I promise, but I've been severely lacking in motivation for anything much lately.
There's this pattern that I repeat every now and then with my mental health. I feel good, I have energy, I get motivated to actually do a bunch of stuff. A few weeks (or months when I'm lucky) pass, during which I feel fantastic because I'm achieving things and having fun and reaching goals. Then BAM, all of a sudden depression rears its head and I wake up one morning feeling like everything is useless and whatever I've accomplished isn't good enough and there's no point in trying anything because I'll only fail and why should I even get out of bed or eat food or anything when I could just lie down with my eyes closed.
Mostly these days I'm pretty good at getting out of the spiral and working through the crap feelings, but the effects can linger for a days or weeks. During that time although I try my best I still don't perform very well at anything much, including simple tasks like reading and writing on eljay. My current round of feeling crappy started on Friday last week, and while I've mostly stayed on top of essential day-to-day tasks and it's clearing up I'm still feeling quite tired and blah.
There is no reason for this. My brain chemistry just hates me. Overall these days I'm about as recovered from depression as I think it's possible for me to get, and it can be hard not to feel frustrated when I have times like this. I need to remind myself more often of how bad it was and look at how good I am at breaking out of the unhealthy thought patterns now. I feel really proud of how far I've come. I'm doing pretty good.
Anyhow, I don't have the energy right now to post a long story for Travel Tales Tuesday but I really don't want to miss it two weeks in a row. I've been trawling through my photos and videos from Fiji anyhow, because I just received a letter from my host family yesterday. For Christmas, I put together a package of gifts for them including toys for the kids, a photo collage, and some clothing I had made for them myself. Their letter was giving me an update on village life as well as a vinaka vaka levu for the package. I'm so happy that they liked it!
What I want to share today is a couple of videos from our time in Nasautoka. After working at the primary school all day, there were several things that happened. First, most of us volunteers went along with the children to wash and cool off in the river:
Afterwards, we would all go home to clean off any lingering mud (there was always a fair bit!) and to dry off. While we were in the village, there were church services every evening. We didn't go every night, but I enjoyed the times we went because the singing was so beautiful. I won't post a video from that right now, because those need a bit of editing that I don't have the patience for just now.
And after church, the whole village gathered in the community hall and there was singing and music (a whole bunch of the men had ukuleles, which was pretty cool), and everybody danced and generally made merry. The every-night church and community hall party was partly in honour of us as guests, and partly because they were still celebrating the new year.
I'd really like to share a bunch of photos too, but I'm completely beat and it's past my bedtime. Perhaps I'll post them another time alongside some actual stories.
There's this pattern that I repeat every now and then with my mental health. I feel good, I have energy, I get motivated to actually do a bunch of stuff. A few weeks (or months when I'm lucky) pass, during which I feel fantastic because I'm achieving things and having fun and reaching goals. Then BAM, all of a sudden depression rears its head and I wake up one morning feeling like everything is useless and whatever I've accomplished isn't good enough and there's no point in trying anything because I'll only fail and why should I even get out of bed or eat food or anything when I could just lie down with my eyes closed.
Mostly these days I'm pretty good at getting out of the spiral and working through the crap feelings, but the effects can linger for a days or weeks. During that time although I try my best I still don't perform very well at anything much, including simple tasks like reading and writing on eljay. My current round of feeling crappy started on Friday last week, and while I've mostly stayed on top of essential day-to-day tasks and it's clearing up I'm still feeling quite tired and blah.
There is no reason for this. My brain chemistry just hates me. Overall these days I'm about as recovered from depression as I think it's possible for me to get, and it can be hard not to feel frustrated when I have times like this. I need to remind myself more often of how bad it was and look at how good I am at breaking out of the unhealthy thought patterns now. I feel really proud of how far I've come. I'm doing pretty good.
Anyhow, I don't have the energy right now to post a long story for Travel Tales Tuesday but I really don't want to miss it two weeks in a row. I've been trawling through my photos and videos from Fiji anyhow, because I just received a letter from my host family yesterday. For Christmas, I put together a package of gifts for them including toys for the kids, a photo collage, and some clothing I had made for them myself. Their letter was giving me an update on village life as well as a vinaka vaka levu for the package. I'm so happy that they liked it!
What I want to share today is a couple of videos from our time in Nasautoka. After working at the primary school all day, there were several things that happened. First, most of us volunteers went along with the children to wash and cool off in the river:
Click to viewAfterwards, we would all go home to clean off any lingering mud (there was always a fair bit!) and to dry off. While we were in the village, there were church services every evening. We didn't go every night, but I enjoyed the times we went because the singing was so beautiful. I won't post a video from that right now, because those need a bit of editing that I don't have the patience for just now.
And after church, the whole village gathered in the community hall and there was singing and music (a whole bunch of the men had ukuleles, which was pretty cool), and everybody danced and generally made merry. The every-night church and community hall party was partly in honour of us as guests, and partly because they were still celebrating the new year.
I'd really like to share a bunch of photos too, but I'm completely beat and it's past my bedtime. Perhaps I'll post them another time alongside some actual stories.