The last writing I did was a report on the small progress I have made since I lost Barbara. I do believe I have had progress, but it is so difficult to continue pushing my way and extending that progress. I still have a long ways to go.
I have come to realize that along side the progress I have made there is a polar opposite going on in my life. Burnout. I feel so tried most of the time. Part of the inner fatigue that I feel is from trying to continue with the progress in those small areas as I described previously. It takes a lot out of me to push myself to clean on the house, to do the laundry, to cook for myself and especially to make those phone calls. There are many times when I just simply do not feel like doing those things and sometimes, to be honest, I do not do them but rather put them off for a day or so.
The biggest part of my life that is suffering burnout though is my job. I find myself with no desire to get up and go to work every day. To understand this, I guess you need to know how I approached my job before the summer of 2018 slapped me in the face. I absolutely loved my job. Each day I looked upon it as a new challenge to be faced and defeated. I was always early arriving and worked hard throughout the day and accomplished a lot. I pushed myself to work as fast and as accurately as possible, to meet deadlines. I was good at it. My job is not one of physical labor but rather mental labor. I was thinking non-stop for 8 hours a day and then more after I got home and as I was readying and driving to work the next day. I would have projects I was working on burned into my memory and be solving problems a lot of the time while in the car or when I was supposed to be watching a movie with Barbara. Many times Barb would say something to me and I had no clue what she was talking about. I was working in my mind.
On days when I would wake up to find a fresh layer of snow on the ground, I saw it as another challenged to be faced and brought down. I got this from my dad. When it snowed, we were more determined to make it to the office early then on any other day. It was a feeling of accomplishment to defeat the roads and the snow and the traffic of others who did not seem to know how to drive in the snow. Both me and dad always won those mornings in the snow.
Now I feel burned out though. My motivation is all but completely gone. Those things that I listed in my progress piece, you will notice I never say I got this. I have overcome this. No, it is a work in progress. I have to will myself to get up and do some cleaning on the house. I have to will myself to gather my clothes and go downstairs to wash them. I have to will myself to make those phone calls. When answering a phone, if the caller ID is not there or it is a name I don't recognize, I do not answer it. I have to will myself to go to the store. It seems like most of the time, I just sit in my chair, next to Barbara's chair and watch the time go by.
My job is where I can feel the burn out the most though. Now my mind totally forgets about any project I am working on the minute I decide it is time to go home. Going home time. That use to mean about thirty or forty minutes later than when I should have left the office. Now as soon as it hits 3:30, I am gone. Long gone. I don't give my job another thought until I am sitting in my chair the next day. Work tires me out. It use to be an adventure everyday at the office. Come up with new ideas, design them, make them work. Untangle an obscene number of lines into individual circuits so that they don't cross and everything works as it should. I use to think of laying out those printed circuit boards as being like working a puzzle everyday and it was a challenge. Now, I pull up the program that I use to create those boards and I feel tired almost immediately just by looking at all those lines. I have a deadline though and so I push my way though it and do the best that I can. It wears me out though.
My productivity at the office is definitely decreasing. I am not as fast as I once was. I go about my job, whether it be mechanical or electrical, with a very definite pace, a slow pace. This last winter, for the first time I can ever remember, I awoke to seeing snow on the streets. I stood there and looked at it. The feeling of a challenge in the snow was gone. I did not want to get out in it. The snow had finally won. I called the office and took a day of vacation. Last winter each time it snowed over night, I stayed home. I didn't seem to feel that my job was so important for me to drag myself out and fight those slippery streets.
If I were at the point where I hope to be in the near future, I would walk into the office and quit on the spot. I am tired. I have put forty years of my life into this company. That is a lot of time. I have traveled for this company. The company sent me to Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Dallas, Boston, Seattle, Denver, and over a two year period I was in San Fransisco every other week for a week at a time. Two years in the Bay Area. I enjoyed it then. I don't think I would now though. I am too tired to hit the road for the company any more. I think that they can sense it in me.
Sometimes, I feel burned out on life. Getting up everyday and going through the same routine over and over and over .... but I keep going. Barbara left a note on her computer just in case her surgery did not go the way we wanted it to, which it did. In the opening line of that note, she practically begs me to keep on going even though she knows I will be tempted not to. She knew it would be hard but she also knew that it was important for me to keep pushing though life and she knew I could do it. So here I am. Pushing through life. To be honest, I am not enjoying life as much as I use to. Things are so different without her to bounce ideas off of, to make jokes with, to have a partner walking beside me. I am alone. Yes I have cousins and other family members around, it isn't the same though. There is no way it could be the same.
I have tried to figure out what has caused this burnout in me since Barbara passed. I think that it has something to do with how my life has been the last several years. I have spent my time being a caregiver, taking care of people. I took care of my uncle. I took care of my sister. I took care of mom and dad, and finally I took care of Barbara. My uncle died. My sister died. MY parents moved to Alabama where my father died. and finally, the last person I took care of, Barbara, died. I am not a caregiver to anyone now. I feel like that had become my sense of purpose in life. Now they are all gone and I find myself alone.Even though I know it isn't the case, the idea pops into my head that I failed at taking care of my uncle, sister and wife. I know that isn't true but the thought does creep in once in awhile. I did the absolute best that I could for all of them. That is the best reasoning I can come up with for feeling so burned out and alone.
All I know for sure is that I am tired. That I feel alone. I feel this way because I lost Barbara, the one constant in my life for over 42 years.
Okay. I know you all are getting tired of me writing about Barbara ALL the time so I am going to try to write more about my past and things that I experienced in life. The things that most of my readers are here for. Life is interesting and some of the things that happen to us, well, they can be pretty bizarre and funny. So I am going to dig back into my brain and try to remember things. Millions of memories are buried in there, it is just a matter of digging them out and sharing them.
Thank all of you for your patience with me over the last year or so.
My condolence to you and yours.
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