As noted in this blog, the day before Luna died I basically stopped my fast paced life to soak her up as much as I could soak up a sick dog in a day. I never had the opportunity with Xena and I had paid so much to get Luna to a point where I could shut off work and spend time with her so that is exactly what I did. I don't want to rehash the whole story here, but safe to say that day was a big wakeup call to me. A level of stress that never went down in my life finally did, and suddenly the more positive version of me I remembered came back after years of being lost to a constant feeling of a need to be productive at all times.
In the weeks after Luna died my focus was to keep these feelings going, to remember the lesson of her last full day on the planet. I thought of it as a "final gift" from that great dog, and reminded myself that if I lost control and fell back into my old stressful lifestyle there was no more Luna to pull me out again. In a way trying to hold onto a less stressful life was a way to hold onto the last bit of her I was able to get, and so I pushed off work both domestically and up at the office to try and figure out how I could move forward with the new mindset while I had the space in life to do that.
After two weeks of "reaching into my gearbox" I realized two things: 1. my brain worked differently now than it did before Finn was born and 2. Some of those changes were good and some of those changes were bad. The trick was to figure out what was what. To get there requires describing my pre-Finn mindset.
Prior to Finn I had two parts of my brain: a part I called the front lobe where the things I had to deal with or remember or juggle that day were processed, and then a part I would call my "back brain" where I would chew on a particular thought thread for days at a time to get a more enlightened answer than my brain could produce on the spot. Sometimes I would chew on inconsequential things in my brain, sometimes I would chew on how to solve problems in my life or my family's life. This long-term processing wasn't always useful because I often couldn't pick what I would be obsessed with at any given moment, and often it would mean I would come to helpful conclusions long after no one else wanted to have the discussion anymore. Lindsey would often make fun of me for this.
Due to how it wasn't always useful combined with the requirements for being more responsible in general post-Finn somewhere along the way I dropped this long-term processing ability to be able to handle more in the moment. I think this probably happened the first year of his life which is something I feel like I barely survived, but then because I didn't realize what happened I never went looking for what I had lost. Instead I took the extra capacity day-to-day and kept rolling with it since it seemed like the long-term processing wasn't a useful part of my life anymore. In 2021 thanks to the space Luna gave me I figured out that wasn't the case.
Turns out living more in the moment was much more stressful for me. I was built a certain way, and so forcing myself to multi-task more and handle more on my "front lobe" was never optimal. It was like carving a Thanksgiving turkey with a Swiss army knife: you can do it but it takes more effort than it should. That effort got reflected in my overall levels of stress. By just sticking to my innate multi-tasking levels my stress levels drop considerably, and so that became my priority. There are two places in my life in particular I discovered I was using the forced extra multi-tasking capacity for and in both cases I am trying to reprioritize what I am doing.
One place was when I tried to do things while I was the primary parent watching Finn. I discovered after Luna's death that unless what I was doing was a task I could do without a brain and do well (few tasks are) trying to overlap that task with watching Finn made me very stressed. There are some exceptions: its easy to wash the dishes when he is locked in a booster seat for example. But for another example this weekend Lindsey wanted me to help her hang some stuff she bought in the piano room to make it feel nicer and less like the Luna death room. When I tried to hang this stuff with him in the middle of the room yelling at both of us I felt super stressed and distracted, but when she took him on a car ride and let me finish not only did I finish but I did more than she expected. Him being in the middle makes any task 4x as hard, and I took too long to realize that.
To this end I have decided that when I am watching him I am going to focus on him and not what else needs to get done. Frankly in the little time I have had this focus I can tell it has fundamentally improved my relationship with him because my brain no longer sees him as something to "manage" while I try to get other things done. Instead I can really enjoy just playing or feeding or hanging out with him, which is the memories years from now I will cherish. Yesterday when I was completely focused on him he said "I love you dada" the first time unprompted and uncoached, which showed me I am on the right path. I just need to keep going.
But Finn and household multi-tasking stress isn't even all or even most of what I was battling. Part of it was a work stress that escalated in 2020. Prior to COVID I never had my work email on my phone, so when I left the office I was done with the place 100%. Was it after 5pm CST? You aren't going to get me! During COVID though this changed. To make up for how much I did domestic things during the day (especially when my son was quarantined at home) I put my work email on my phone and started checking it all hours. During the COVID year for the first time clients got emails back from me after hours or on Saturdays, so I could tell myself "I am working hard and I can prove it!" when it seemed like the blame for lost productivity during COVID was going to be passed around. Work became a 24/7 stress, and combined with the "life stress" I had created I had a feedback look I couldn't get out of until Luna made me.
To back off a little from work was easy, and in fact we had some things change over the summer that allowed me to reprioritize less on the day to day and more on bigger projects I wanted to see done. But unlike the home stress this stress keeps wanting to creep back in every time I have a busy day, or every time someone else is running to the ball on a Saturday. I keep having to remind myself of my day with Luna, remind myself how hard it is to get out of the mindset that was hurting my life, remind myself how I want to have a good relationship with Lindsey and a good relationship with Finn. I have to stay vigilant.
As a side bonus after a month of living this way my long-term processing capability has started to come back. I didn't realize how much I missed it, and how it provides me two big benefits in life. The first thing it provides me is a distraction, something else to focus on when a single day feels overwhelming. This is what I was really missing in life. The second thing it provides me is the actually high-end problem solving ability I pride myself for. As it is my home network sucks, my home media system is dead and my smarthome setup is suboptimal. All of this happened because to keep these things going requires a big picture plan, and I didn't have that capacity for so long I forgot how. I could feel the feeling of helplessness when approaching these issues but I didn't know why. Now I do: it takes chewing on all of it for a while to get real answers and my brain wasn't wired that way the last two years.
So going forward I have a set of goals:
1. Keep Finn as the priority and don't be concerned as much about what other productive things I am doing when I am watching him. If stuff falls off it falls off, but really I am learning when I am less stressed I get less worn down so when I get a minute to myself I can do productive things instead of just acting like vegetable trying to recover.
2. Keep work stress to a minimum. I have some stressful weeks on the plate this year (like in October), but I need to make sure when I can pull back I do. The trick here is to work out a cadence so enough gets done that no one can complain about what I am doing. I am not here yet but I am working on it.
3. Don't lose sight of the goal. Frankly in the last few weeks I realize my romanticizing of Luna's last day was over the top: she didn't feel good that day and maybe didn't even enjoy being alive to spend it with me. That isn't to say I regret it, but there wasn't anything magical about that day except for the fact I had to finally face that Luna was done and I was willing to make the space for myself to do that. If I can continue to make space for Lindsey and for Finn then I can look back at her end at the beginning of a new life for me. It is a second chance I didn't know I needed, but I am glad I got. The trick is not to waste it.
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