I’ve been on a Tumblr hiatus recently. Honestly, I kinda forgot I had one. It’s not personal, Tumblr. It’s not my fault. We’re gonna blame it on the concussion.
At the end of September, I was in a car accident. Everyone walked away, which was great. The cars were replaced (I was a passenger, so that wasn’t my hassle to deal with). I did learn the hard way that you can get one hell of a concussion and never lose consciousness.
Said concussion led to all the usual unsavory side effects, as well as lots of drama with my new employer. Hopefully that’s behind us now. I just returned to working full days in the office before Thanksgiving, and those are still mentally & emotionally exhausting. It could have been worse, though.
The challenge with an injury like this is that you look healthy. Physically, I looked fine. Within a week or two, I was interacting with people like normal. Only people who spent extended amounts of time with me still noticed that I wasn’t myself. The hubs attributes this to ‘a highly refined set of coping skills.’ (I’m taking it as a compliment.) Because I ‘seemed’ okay, people didn’t understand that mentally, I was still struggling. I’m still not sleeping all that well & the frequent headaches now that I’m back at work are beyond old. I’m just kind of accepting it as my new normal and dealing the best that I can.
The hardest part of this whole experience was not being able to be productive. It’s annoying when physically you feel okay, but mentally, you don’t even trust yourself to follow directions on a recipe. I messed up even the most basic things for a while (who really needs deodorant every day? Um, this girl…) I’ve been blessed with smarts and common sense and for the first time, things that made sense when I first thought them weren’t right. And while I knew they weren’t right, I couldn’t figure out what was not right about them. Pair all that with the common hormonal imbalance that can follow a concussion (literally, your endocrine system can get knocked out of adjustment) and you’ve got a recipe for a mild depressive episode. I’ve resisted, but it’s been a true challenge.
Not being able to do anything creative didn’t help the mental challenge at all. Fairly quickly, the hubs’ mom (who is a doctor) suggested that I do some knitting. Just nothing too crazy. What fellow knitters would call ‘TV knitting’, meaning that you can knit while looking at the TV, not looking down watching & counting every stitch. Thank goodness I listened. The muscle memory kicked in, it didn’t cause a headache & I was accomplishing something every day. Knitting saved my mental state!
Now that things are returning to quasi-normal, the knitting has kicked back into gear. I won’t be doing much gift knitting this year, as I’m disastrously behind schedule. Since I’m not worried about gifts, I’m deeming December as 31 Days of Stash Burning. I’m scouring Ravelry looking for projects that I can bust out in a relatively short amount of time (while of course still working on a sweater or two in the background) with the smaller lots of yarn in my stash.
December will be a month of cowls, shawls, maybe some lace, mittens, gloves and socks. Yes, @Prajna Mama, socks. I’ve got lots of things queued up on Ravelry. I’ll be tagging things finished during this binge #31DaysofStashBurning & I’m rearing to go!! All these 1 & 2 skein yarns, bought with an idea but never quite coming to fruition or bought on an impulse & the justification that I’ll find the perfect project for this lovely little yarn, be gone!!
Besides, I have to make room for all the yarn I bought on Cyber Monday. 🙂
Donita Westman 