Enjoy everything I can enjoy.

Italian Art.


Just reading about stress and burnout on Ran’s blog @ Towards Happiness

http://happy-rain-days.blogspot.com/

Reading her post made me think of 1989 when I had to go off work sick.

Guess I suffered a burnout in 1989 when I went sick from work stressed to bits, recognise the symptoms Rain lists.

Lethargy and apathy and depression are horrible, could not sleep at night and could not get up in the morning, instead I wanted to sleep during the day.

Was off sick with stress from 1989 until 1998, in 1990 I decided that I needed to do something totally different.

So I did something different and went to the UK and did a Certificate of Higher Education for one academic year near London.

Then did a degree course, the Certificate of Higher Education meant I got let off the first year of my Criminology degree.

Realised once I was at Middlesex University that it would have been better to have done the first year.

I did the BA and then an MA in Criminology then came back here to Amsterdam.

Tried to get work with my qualifications, had wanted to work in prison aftercare.

Encountered such a clique and such a jealousy atmosphere I left and did something different again, this time I did an IT Helpdesk course.

Got work on an IT Helpdesk and was working on the Service Desk at my last job when I fell several times in one year culminating in breaking the cartilage in my knee.

After a few months hobbling, it became very obvious that there was something else apart from just broken cartilage,

Looking back wish sometimes that I knew then that my walking days would be coming to an end sooner than I thought.

Really shocked in March 2007 just after my birthday, when I could no longer get up out of my wheelchair and shuffle a few steps.

What a birthday present to get, seems to happen every year, my first ‘present’ was losing my balance on my birthday in 2006

Guess I did not realise that the electric wheelchair I got in March 2008 would give me a pressure sore because it did not support my back and the seat was too big for me.

Maybe it is just as well that I did not know exactly what was coming as then I would perhaps have been even more upset.

After all anticipating every progression of my MS would have made it difficult to enjoy the nice things in my life.

See now that at the beginning I was terrified and could not make the best of things as fear had a grip on me.

Glad now that I became aware of the need to not get ahead of myself and spend all my time and energy worrying about what could happen in the future.

I understand that not everyone wants to stay in the moment and be here, right here and now, certainly remember being stressed and depressed when the moment I was in was too painful.

For me now it would be more painful if I did not stay in the moment and enjoy everything I can.

This is important for me and my situation now.