Scatterbrain

One of my biggest fears with COVID floating around (especially in my own house most recently) is that if I catch it, I will have a very long period of brain fog.  When I got exposed last year, in the midst of my month-long headache, brain fog was a huge struggle.  That was just an exposure and not a full-blown infection, so I can only imagine what a higher viral load might do to me.  It's hard enough to have the energy and organization to do things around the house, but it's absolutely devastating to my work.  My job is full of small details and thinking through processes that require a lot of focus--generally like a big puzzle.  When my brain isn't working right, that kind of thought process is almost impossible, which makes my work impossible.  There are so many details I need to get right, and one minor thing could throw off an entire mailing list.  It's scary and has always been a concern of mine since last year's month-long struggle.  But even on a good day, keeping my brain on target is hard...hence why the slightest additional challenge scares me.

Lately I've had this trend while working where my mornings are scattered and unproductive, but my afternoons end up more productive and sometimes even deeply focused--hence the zombie fog I mentioned in my last post.  The morning lack of focus has been concerning to me--is my brain starting to degrade?--but I realized recently that it's not just me.  It's the work I need to do in the morning that's screwing them up.  It's hard to stay focused when I'm bored or annoyed with what I'm doing, and every morning involves one tedious and annoying--but very important--task that I hate.  Beyond that I have a number of annoying tasks that constantly interrupt each other.  My mornings are full of emails...and responses, and responses to my responses.  By the time I do those, run a couple reports, and try to start the most pressing project on my to do list, it's already lunch and it feels like I got nothing of significance done.  Then, if I'm lucky, I have a panic-induced afternoon hyperfocus just to catch up and feel like I accomplished something, which is satisfying but mind-numbing.  But some days nothing works, and add in meetings or kids at home and it's a wonder I get anything done.  Ultimately I'm just doing too many little things at any given moment, and I have to keep each project moving, so even the few minutes I might spend on each daily adds up to a lot.  And good luck trying to focus or think through a tougher project with emails popping up and other tasks forcibly moving themselves up the priority list before I have a chance to forget them.  It's been exhausting and it's been like this for over a year, but I'm just now starting to understand why it's been so hard.  The sheer volume is just too much.  And then when my own personal life adds its own set of tasks and thoughts to the mix, it gets even worse.  My brain is full and has ceased to be able to organize it all.

So you can imagine how the past 10 days has been, dealing with work stuff and then alternating my non-work thoughts between COVID-infected Jacob and the trip we're supposed to be on two weeks from now.  COVID Jacob was a bit needy--refusing to make himself food lest he contaminate the kitchen, leaving a full day's assortment of dishes and bottles in the basement, and complaining about homework, wearing a mask, and feeling generally terrible.  He tested negative on Wednesday night but still felt pretty awful on Thursday, at which point I started wondering if Long COVID might be a concern.  He seemed to feel a bit better over the course of the day, so we did let him go to practice that night, in part to be involved and in part to see if he could do physical activity.  He was tired but seemed to do okay, but the hangover the next day was a bit rough after not just being off the court for a week, but barely moving off the couch.  Saturday was equally iffy.  Hopefully he continues to improve, but it might be slower than expected, leaving some worry in the back of my mind.

But I have to put that aside to try to focus on the trip.  And getting my life ready for the trip.  Those are two very different things, for the record.  I can't hold off for another couple weeks waiting to make sure he's okay, and then have to scramble.  There is way too much that needs to happen in the next two weeks for that.  We officially committed to the 11-day Midwest odyssey in part because I think it will be easier to work a bunch of half days than have four days completely offline for travel.  I might be totally wrong, but I'm erring on the side of adventure and at least I won't have a hundred emails in my inbox multiple times.  I held my breath and booked the flights the other night, confident I had found the best options but still terrified of the entire prospect of this trip.  I reserved a rental car Friday night in a slight panic when I realized the prices the Hertz site had showed me were weekly prices, not the full prices, and I need a lot more than a week.  That blew the budget, but I found one closer to what I was expecting via Alamo...so we'll see.  I still have to figure out non-tournament hotels, but I might do those on the fly as we figure out how much we have to do in each city.  I'm relieved we know our flights (and the times are decent--whew) so I can start planning everything else, but there are still so many thoughts floating around in my head that will be endlessly distracting.

I now have a running list on my phone of random stuff I need to do before we leave and odd things I have to remember to pack--things like a laundry bag (we'll likely have to do a load somewhere along the way), my optical mouse, the GPS (easier than killing my phone battery), and some simple tableware so we can microwave food and eat in the hotel room.  And that's probably just the beginning.  At first I thought that packing for this should be easy compared to Disney, but as this list grows I'm not so sure.  I'm already picturing how frantic I might be the day before we leave when I'm working an event until 3:30 (on top of an event the day before) and need to wrap up my in-office existence with enough time to come home, make dinner, finish packing, and go to bed incredibly early.  

In the meantime, I have so much going on at work, half of it being catch-up projects from my last insanely busy stretch and the other half being prep for our upcoming Day of Giving a little over a week after I get back.  The first weekend back is an off weekend (much to my boss' delight) and the weekend after the Day is only a Massachusetts trip, so that will be manageable.  But the lead-up is going to be a lot, and I'll also be trying to get a mailing out while I'm gone.  At home, I have Easter prep to keep in mind.  Before that I need to wrap up our taxes, notify Jacob's school when he'll be out, and prepare what I can to make sure Craig and Carter are functional and aren't eating out for a week straight.  Oh, and did I mention our kitchen faucet started leaking so that's getting fixed tomorrow?  So guess who spent this weekend cleaning the house (again) and bringing out the spring/Easter decorations, in between Carter's final game (a WIN!) and his year-end celebration taking up our afternoons?  Oh, and I booked our flights for our Wichita weekend, gathered most of our tax documents, and did two loads of laundry.  Not too shabby, but merely a start.

Despite the accomplishments, there's still so much left for me to ruminate over.  I feel like I'm borderline obsessive, second-guessing and overthinking everything.  It just adds to the brain clutter and partially diverts my attention from the rest of my life.  Now that the travel is mostly booked, now I get to fixate on worrying about how it all goes.  Part of me wonders when I got to be such a worry-wart and so afraid of going out into the world.  Ten years ago, despite having a newborn and four-year-old at home, I planned a cross-country trip on 24 hours' notice.  I packed up myself and both kids, dropped them off with my parents, flew to Seattle by myself (on standby even, ha), rented a car, drove south to Tacoma to wander around Chihuly stuff, then back north through Seattle and over the border to Canada where I met up with Craig.  And then after 36 hours of fun, I drove two hours before dawn back to the airport by myself on about four hours of sleep, dropped off the car, and flew cross country again.  This time I have weeks to plan, very little time crunch, a short list of fun activities, and a travel buddy, yet I'm freaking out.  I guess in the meantime I've had a couple canceled trips and lots of COVID interruptions, so my brain is all too aware of what could go wrong.  When I did that crazy trip I was still in newborn baby fog and the desire to get out and have some fun (and not miss a championship) probably far outweighed any fears.  It was all just pure adventure, knowing I probably wouldn't have another chance to do something like that for a long time (I didn't).  At the same time, COVID stole a lot of opportunities to travel and I cursed myself for a couple years for not squeezing in more fun while we had a chance.  I know lacrosse travel got in the way a bit, but we should have figured it out anyway.  The kids will only be young for so long and we'll only have a few chances to take amazing trips together.  Hindsight is 20/20, of course--we never imagined a pandemic getting in the way--and Disney was a good start to get back on track.  These trips will be putting a pretty big dent in the budget again, but I hope Jacob and I make some good memories, and I hope we can still do something as a family.  We need more good memories and I want to make sure Carter gets some fun where we can cram it in.  So I guess I'm surprised that my COVID fears and my COVID FOMO haven't canceled one another out a bit better, but I guess we'll see where this goes.  

Anyway, all that to say, I have a busy 12 days ahead.  And I sure hope my brain clears up enough to make it through.