Thought Picnic: From overloaded to overcoming

Body in overload

Having been back from Cape Town for just over a week, it has been unsettling without the clear ability to concentrate on anything so functionally productive. For the last two nights in South Africa, I took time away for just myself, much as I have a quest for lasting and exciting companionship, I am quite essentially an introvert, desperately in need of just my own company and my own space, I love the outer quiet that allows the robust debates in my head to engage quite vigorously, almost to exhaustion.

Back at home, without due consideration for the change in environment and weather, I took my second COVID vaccine booster (the fourth jab), the next day. They did not have the Pfizer/BioNTech Comirnaty product on offer which I had for the first two vaccines and the booster, but I was offered the Moderna Spikevax instead, and it is based on the same mRNA technology.

Questions on disorder

As I am in a vulnerable cohort, I will on the advice of my supervising medical personnel take whatever protections are offered, I do not have the requisite medical knowledge to make far-reaching decisions that can be quite impactful on my health and wellbeing, I would rather ask questions demanding satisfactory and convincing answers than unilaterally exclude myself from the purview of medical management.

I think both factors; the change in weather and the booster exacerbated a feeling of discomfort and unease, along with some weakness and tiredness. Much as I exercised will over capability, there was much I was not doing, including getting back to my walking exercises. To heap on that distress, my house sitter had rearranged my home, with things not being where I would have had a mental note of leaving them and other things not being in the order or way they should be left.

Patterns of mindfulness

I try to convince myself that I can handle a bit of chaos or bring some order to things, but it is more upsetting to realise that deliberate disorder has been introduced to a space that is usually exclusively yours. It might well be that I find myself somewhere on the autistic spectrum that once the patterns I expect to observe have been distorted, I am deep into stress management and countermeasures.

At one time, I could not find what I was looking for it had been secreted away somewhere else, I just went to bed trying not to bother myself until they were found the next day. Later, when I could not find the power adapter to one of the laptops, I could not be bothered with asking, I just ordered another and held off until the next day again, what I wanted to do.

Funnily, it is at these times that could trigger a mental breakdown in others that I just want some peace around me, refusing to socialise even when it can be beneficial, because I just want to be alone with my thoughts or go to sleep and let all the turmoil resolve itself in the subconscious.

Completing all material

It might seem quirky too that the rest of the material for the Microsoft test I passed two weeks ago that I could never have done in time for taking the test on the Microsoft Learn website needed going through. I completed the full curriculum on Monday and Tuesday over almost 20 hours. I had the feeling, that just because I had passed the test did not mean I should abandon the material. I did the same for the test I passed in early June.

I think over the next few days, I would get back to myself to be more full of what I like to do, I am taking each day at a time, thankful for all the blessings and goodwill that surround me.

I do miss Brian, he is everything that exudes the joy and fun I enjoy in a person as much as he can infuriate and frustrate, you learn to manage these things in a relationship, and for all the apparent togetherness I portray, I am just as imperfect, hoping to be a better man and lover – it is a work in progress.

I am a dreamer and my dreams have come truer and better than I ever could dare to imagine, it comes to a point that I am sometimes afraid to live in the reality of extraordinary dreams coming true, for that I might just need some help because there are exciting lives to live and stories to tell.