It’s been quite a bit since I last wrote anything. And that bit has been quite the roller coaster. Lots of ups and downs. Mostly downs, but the kinds of situations and emotions that ultimately continue to remind me how lucky I am and how I need to make self-care a bigger priority in my life.

In this post, I was pretty stoked to mention how I had been off of antidepressants for a bit. I talked about how I was in a really good place in my life. Well, the fun thing about depression is that it does what it wants, so I didn’t get to stay in that good space for very long. I made a power move and asked my doctor is I could go back on my meds and have been back on for almost two months. Obviously I struggled hard to admit to myself that this needed to happen, and it took me a bit to actually text my doc and make moves. As you would expect, I took that decision pretty hard and saw it as another lost challenge instead of seeing it as me doing what I needed to do to take care of myself.

My biggest self-care move that I’ve made recently was one of the hardest things I’ve done in a very long time. Everyone that knows me knows that I’m a self-proclaimed workaholic and take a lot of pride in my work ethic. They also know that I am highly devoted to and proud to have worked at Cruisers for almost seven years. I love my work family and regardless how much longer I stay in my position as General Manager, I plan on at least being involved with that shop for many more years.

Seven years is a long time to work at a sandwich shop, and after this summer and the many changes happening in both shops, in my boss’s life and in my own life, I basically started to fall apart. Luckily for me, I’m sure I’ve said it in multiple other posts, but my boss is a really cool guy and he could tell that the burnout was real. Despite the messiness of our talks leading up to it, he has allowed me to take the winter off to get my head back on straight. This was something I had been discussing with my therapist for months leading up to me finally making the decision to ask if I could step down for a bit. With us being a little short staffed at the time, I was more than willing to continue to work and even wanted to stick around and help with some back end tasks like monthly inventory, but he made it clear that I needed a full break. And, just like that, I had two weeks off work before my next scheduled shift working on the mountain.

That first week was ROUGH. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I’m also only working part time on the mountain in order to really take some time for myself. So far, this seems like one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I miss my nerds at the shop, but I’ve been working on improving myself.

I’ve been drafting this post for almost a month but would lose motivation every time I’d try to work on it. Then I got the most homesick I’ve ever been the week rolling into Christmas. Obviously I miss my family and friends back in Ohio, but I think not being able to be with my shop family pushed the dagger in further. It’s weird that as exhausted as I am (tomorrow will be my 15th straight day of work on the mountain), today I managed to find the strength in me to get my thoughts on here.

Next week, my life should start to slow down much more and I hope to find ways to keep myself motivated enough to pump out posts regularly. I’ve already got some ideas for a few things I want to write about, and as long as I don’t let my INFP imagination wander too much, I’ve got some cool things that I want to try/do. So, we’ll see how this goes.

Don’t be afraid to make those big moves needed to really take care of yourself. Make self-care your word, resolution, and life for 2020.