Still not perfect
With the pandemic, I’ve gotten really serious about managing my stress through exercise. On the days that I don’t ride, I’m a monster. A shouty, pissy, mean person who—despite not riding that day—is probably still wrapped in some manner of sporty fabric. At least from the waist down. But before you draw the completely logical conclusion that I’m mad at yoga pants, I’m going to go out on a limb and surmise that it’s probably because of pandemic stress.*
A few months ago my employer brought in a team of super brainy scientists to explain to all of us type-A people that we haven’t just spontaneously started sucking. The forgetfulness, anxiety, and general anxiety about forgetfulness we’re experiencing are the result of traumatic, continual stressors that modern society hasn’t groomed us for. What may have been critical for our ancestors to keep from being some toothy predator’s afternoon snack has no place in a world where my car can tell me I shouldn’t change lanes because someone is in my blind spot. However, it was really good at making me feel anxious within the walls of my own home, mildly sick, and generally useless.
Don’t confuse this with fear. It’s not that type of reaction caused by that emotion. It’s a slow simmer, not a full boil.
By modern standards, our brains are working as designed… and yet they feel like they aren’t working correctly. For me, in addition to the symptoms I’ve already described, my default coping mechanism of needing more sleep has been turned up to 11. It escalates so quickly that my family coined the term “slangry” to describe the way I get when critical systems start to shut down. I know y’all have your own escape hatches. Food, wine, excessive cultivation of sourdough, macramé. It’s a good time.
But imagine my surprise to find out this summer that the most effective weapon in my pandemic arsenal is not an automatically refilling BevMo order. It was to double down on my type A-ness.
In what could only be described as a fortuitous accident, I was found by a team of like-minded, box-checking, zero-chill-having folks like me and jumped into a tribe of people who are relentlessly devoted to winning a totally superfluous and vain spin bike challenge. They’re also some of the most snarky, supportive, selfless, and devoted people I’ve ever known. We refer to ourselves as a family and it doesn’t feel cheesy. It feels purposeful and real.
I don’t know why this screenshot is so big. It’s really an embarrassment when you consider I’m married to a designer and technically run a design team. Oh well.
To stay in the family there are expectations. I need keep my shit right, not get injured, do my rides, cheer on my people, support those who need a kick in the ass, work hard, and most importantly: check. fucking. boxes. That shit keeps our team logo at the top of the challenge leaderboard and staying at the top of the leaderboard is the keystone. Not because winning is the most important thing, but because once we start to crack, it’s a slippery slope.**
It’s amazingly like my sanity.
Accountability is key for someone like me. I have goals for myself, but they don’t hold a candle to the goals we set as a family.
In my life, I’m tremendously blessed to have a diverse and lively support system. It’s a privilege to have the accountability, profanity, and camaraderie I get from my riding team. I’m blessed to have an amazing framily--the friends who are family to me, my husband, and son. My coworkers (past and present) are fucking outstanding. They inspire me with their commitment to each other, the mission, and creating cringe-worthy gifs of ourselves to pepper all over slack conversations. I’m blessed to have blood family and family by marriage who accept me for who I am, who accept the love I give them, and pay me back in kind.
In short, I like to think that I make regular deposits to the friend bank, but I’m always surprised by the generosity of my peeps when I need to make withdrawals.
And yet, I’m still feeling jacked up. My head still isn’t right. And it won’t be until this virus is under control and my dinosaur brain stops scanning the perimeter for threats.
I’m not perfect and either or you. This blog probably has a million typos and grammatical errors. But whatever. Let’s be un-perfect, which I’m certain isn’t a real word, for a bit. Lets accidentally soot stain our pristine white brick fireplace with a rogue Duraflame log and maybe flip out about missing an item on our amazon order. Let’s realize that the world is a messed up place but that we’ll get through it with messed up hair and severely underutilized social skills… together.
*I have lots of toilet paper, by the way. And meat. SO MUCH MEAT. So I should be in good shape to weather this storm, lycra or no.
**And for those of you who see me posting my workouts, it’s not some meta-attempt at shaming anyone who is handling this shit another way. I’m not perfect. My feed is not me. If it were, it’d include the baguette I baked yesterday that looked like something my dog found in the woods. It’d show me passed out in the bathtub at 4pm. It’d show a whole lot of empty wine bottles in my recycling bin. (Ack.)
