According to Newton's first law (how my boyfriend explained it to me), an object at rest will want to stay at rest, while an object in motion will want to stay in motion. Apparently that's inertia for you...?
Why am I writing this? Well, because I very much feel the same. The longer I stay in motion, the harder it is to stop. The busier I get, the less I can stop and assess how I am doing and what I need. Busyness fuels itself and before you know it you are doing something completely out of character and you have no idea how you got there. In my heyday I snapped at someone who had nothing to do with whatever issue was plaguing me, I stress ate my way through... lets just say a lot of crap food, I had bursts into an ugly cry over the smallest remark. All of these things came because of something else that went undiagnosed. My problem(s) had started days/weeks before, and I just carried on instead of taking the time to sort myself. I just bulldozed my way through life because I wouldn't stop. I couldn't, I was too busy, there was too much at stake, the deadlines were looming and who needs sleep, anyway?
With age, distance and a lot of practising (and also a lot of failing), I have learnt I am never too busy to stop. In fact if I find myself verbalising that I am too busy for blank, then that it's a trigger for me to stop and have a time out.
Most times busyness will creep up on me. It can start innocuously enough with two weekends in a row when we are doing something social. Those weekends just happen to fall at the end of a very busy week (who could've predicted it?). To relax after work, we slump on the sofa and binge watch fail videos instead of having quality time to replenish. I could make time to rest by skipping my dance and fitness classes, but I'm not a quitter, so I carry on. All this hustle and bussle, the work stress starts to affect my sleep quality, but instead of skipping the gym now and then and having a lie in, I carry on getting up at stupid a.m. (official time), because again I ain't no quitter. All of a sudden I am spinning more plates than my body can cope with and my attention and my mind are stretched too thinly. I am too little butter for too much bread. So something starts to crack. My diet goes out the window, I forget to call my family at the end of the week, or I stop investing in my relationship, living mindlessly from sun up to sun down. This was the old me. Again and again.
It is so easy to fall down the rabbit hole because it's so gradual and everything has an excuse. And here is the grim thing: this will never be done. There will never come a day when you say you've won and you will never again fall down the rabbit hole. It will always be there, lurking in the shadows and waiting to catch you unaware. So how do you cope? How do you fight back?
You learn to create coping mechanisms to keep you aware and away from a life on auto pilot. I used to think meditation was the magical panacea that would fix all my awareness problems. But if I find that if I have a very regular meditation practice I eventually start to zone out. I stop being as present and the whole exercise becomes counter-productive. So I change it up. Some days I meditate, others I make lists of how I'm feeling, and what I need. Some days I will spend five minutes focusing all my attention on a sense (what can I smell, what memories do those smells invoke, how does the smell make me feel) or an object (scented candles are my favourite for this), or I will quickly list a few things I am grateful for.
My point is this: you will always be vulnerable to the trap of busyness (blame physics and Newton's first law!), but you can learn to cope. Only you can find what works for you. Once you do, arm yourself with a few of those things, because none of them will work 100% of the time, so you'll need to change it up a bit. You will still fail sometimes. We all do. The struggle will never the truly over. But I promise it will always be worth it.
*Queen
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