What Does Menopausal Self-Care even Look Like?

It's official, I've hit menopause. Sigh. I know this time of change is supposed to be amazing... or something... but it sure doesn't feel like it!

Hitting puberty, people would say, "Oh, you're a woman now." Yay.

Hitting menopause, what do people say?? "Oh, you're an elder now." I haven't heard that yet. "Welcome to the crone years." Haven't heard that either. "Welcome to the wise years." Nope... not that one either.

I'm not sure what the next years are going to bring but after watching my partner sweat through hot flashes for the last 10 or more years... I'm not holding my breath.

I'm moody, cranky, emotional, tired, exhausted and just plain out of sorts. Some days I feel more like me... other days I feel like a soggy limp dishrag with no "oomph" left for anything. I am resisting my to-do list with a fierceness that surprises me.

My partner tells me that I need to learn how to practice self-care. The menopause resources all say the same thing. I need shift from taking care of others (and everything else) to taking care of me. And... to be completely honest... I have no idea what that means. Bubble baths? Me time?

I do know a few things though. I need (like... "need") to get out in the woods at last once a week... and at this point, I would say more like two or three times a week. Just me and the woods. Because the other thing I've noticed is that this little introvert needs time away from the house. With both of us more or less cooped up together, I don't have as much alone time as before. I used to go to Starbucks for a few hours every morning for some alone time... just me and my laptop and my ear-buds... in a crowd. But... go figure... that counted as alone time.

So there's probably a few things colliding here... menopause, pandemic fatigue and a over-stimulated introvert. And yet... the perfectionist in me thinks I should still be able to race around like the energizer bunny, despite the fact that there are a lot of external and internal events that are draining little bunny. Drained battery on the me-time front... wonky hormones that are sending me on a Tilt-a-Whirl/Roller-Coaster madness... and just general tiredness from the pandemic.

Sooo... self-care... what is this critter? What does it even mean or look like? Well... here's what it looked like today...

I know that my triglycerides are a bit high. The best way to lower them is through... exercise... which is on all of the menopausal self-care lists I've looked at. I have been a bit lax on the exercise front during the winter but today, I plugged in an Amy Schumer audiobook and plodded up the Beast Hill and then extended that to a 45 minute walk. I then sat down, journalled for a bit and decided to go to Walmart for a new watch strap. My Garmin fitness tracker/watch strap has been irritating my skin of late so I have not been wearing it for the last 4 weeks. I've been meaning to run over to Walmart and get a new leather strap for the last month... but it always gets shoved aside for other errands. OK... enough of that... today I drove to Walmart, got the watch strap and two jars of my favourite pickles (no, not pregnant) and a new card game for my partner and I to play during our TV-free evenings. Done. I can now strap on my fitness tracker and at least get a handle on how many steps/intensity minutes I am doing in a day and set some goals.

This trip to Walmart felt kind of decadent... instead of sitting down and writing first thing in the morning... I headed off to Walmart for a watch strap. Pre-menopausal me would have judged this to be a frivolous trip, better tied into Friday morning's weekly shopping trip. But... four Fridays have come and gone and yet... I have failed to manage to squeeze in the Walmart errand. Enough of that I thought... 

Sooo... that's what self-care looked like for me this morning. I'm not sure what the rest of the day will bring... maybe clearing out the shed so I can dig out my bicycle in order to do some small rides (5 minutes or less) in order to acclimatize my butt to the bike seat.

I'm not really used to this idea of putting me first... it seems a tad selfish or self-centred or... self-something. But I am starting to consider the possibility that this is just a concrete example of me putting on my own mask first and then being able to tend to everything else. It's a bit of a learning curve and I'm not very good at it right now but... with some small steps, I'm hoping that I can master this... or should I say mistress this...

Being Grounded

When I was a kid, my best friend and I played outside a tonne. Those where the days when you could play out of sight and out of mind. Parents weren't concerned about their kids being abducted and eaten by a bear. We'd go play up the mountain near our homes, or in the water field at the base of the mountain. We called it the Water Field because the ground sloped downwards in one area and, in the fall, winter and spring, there was always standing water. It made for a great hockey rink if you didn't mind playing around the cottonwood trees, red ossier dogwood bushes and other shrubbery sticking out of the ice.

The thing was... it wasn't always clear how thick the ice was... particularly in the spring and fall. We would have our rubber boots on and we would tentatively inch out onto the ice and... sometimes we'd be golden but... other times... we'd crash through and end up with soakers. Some worse than others. I think one time my friend crashed through and the water was up to his waist. That was not a fun adventure.

I still have this Lego house!

Anyhow... we'd squelch home in our soggy wellies and... both of us would get grounded for a week. No going out on our bikes. No adventures on the mountain. We couldn't even talk on the phone. I was stuck playing at home with my sister (5 years younger...) or in our backyard. Luckily, I was an introvert so a grounding wasn't a cruel punishment. I had more than enough books to read and could play with my Legos all by myself for hours... or with my train set or... any number of other toys. I don't think I was every bored...

Today... it kind of feels like Mother Nature has wielded the same tool. Most of us are grounded. Oh sure, we can still go out for groceries and walks or call our friends on the phone or video chat. But we are essentially stuck at home... no... wait... we GET to stay at home for most of the day, interacting with the people in our household. Maybe chat with the neighbour over the fence as he builds his own greenhouse and raised beds.

On Facebook, I see people reading books, decluttering and doing puzzles. I've been doing that too... got a 1000 piece puzzle on the go right now. But... whereas in the past, I might have buckled down and nailed the puzzle in 3 hours... now, I'm kind of just pecking away at it for 15 minutes here or half an hour there.

As for books... most of the ones on my shelves have been read and some have been read multiple times. My usual source of books is the pubic library and that source has dried up. I guess I could borrow books from the e-library or even buy some online but... the interest isn't there right now.
 

Before - Blue Closet

And decluttering... well, I guess I'm doing a bit of that too... organizing and sorting things and then seeing what can stay and what can go. Although... stockpiling the donation pile is becoming a problem!

Which means, I have plenty of time on my hands... and the motivation to handle a lot of the incomplete projects around the house. And there are a lot. Big ones... little ones... I am using my own advice (what an idea) and just taking the next small step in accomplishing whatever task is in my sights.

Case in point... when we moved into this house, the previous owners had some rather eclectic ideas of what a closet should look like. No closet doors for one thing - but that got handled early on thanks to the Restore. But... the one bedroom closet was painted a deep dark red and the other was painted a deep dark blue.

After - Painted Closet

I handled the red one a few years ago when I added some extra shelving to the closet. But the blue one has been lingering for 7+ years now. It wasn't a high priority closet as it is in my office but... every time I opened the closet, it would niggle at me. Plus... being such a deep, dark colour, it sucked up all the light in the closet and it was hard to find things in there...

So, a few weeks ago, I buckled down, dug out the half-full can of primer and some left-over paint from a basement reno (off-white) and... just did it. Took two coats of primer and two coats of paint but... it is complete.

That is a huge weight off of my to-do list because that project had been sitting on the list for years and grown quite weighty. Completing that project has also created some space... and I can now see a few other little projects and are next on the horizon.

I guess, in some ways, at the end of all this, I want to have something to show for days of self-isolation... A rejuvenated body, mind and spirit as well as a slimmed-down list of incomplete to-dos!

Breaking up with my To-Do List

"I'm breaking up with you!"

That's my biannual scream at my To-Do List. It happens like clockwork. I start sinking under the weight of incomplete tasks and upcoming To-Do's and inevitably think that there's something wrong with my current To-Do List.

If only I had the "right" To-Do List app or method or system or something.

I stomp off in a huff, troll through different to-do list apps and methodologies before I discover a sparkly new one that looks like the answer to my prayers. Harps play, angels hum, lights dazzle and I fall head over heels for my new To-Do List love. I then storm into my current To-Do List and move everything over to the new app/tool/method and slam an invisible door. "I am so DONE with you!" Hmph.

All goes well for a week or two. My new To-Do List and I are in the honeymoon phase after all. I am the energizer bunny of productivity! Things are going swimmingly and then... inevitably... the shiny newness wears off and... I realize that the new app is not cutting it. In fact, it's worse than my old method!

And so I go crawling back to Remember the Milk (my long-term app) and repopulate my To-Do List and swear that I'll always be true. We're good for a few weeks/months and then... it begins again.

This cycle of disillusionment/cheating/switching/reconciliation takes a lot of time and energy and it would be soooo much easier to not have to go through this every few months.

It's not You, It's Me

The thing is... the problem is not with my To-Do List... it's with me. Much as I would love to get rid of my To-Do List... there are way too many moving parts in my life for me to abandon it completely. I need to be able to keep track of upcoming tasks otherwise bills don't get paid, calls don't get made and things don't get done. My To-Do List is my catch-all for everything that I need to remember... in the short-term and long-term.

While I keep coming back to RTM, I've also tried innumerable productivity systems and apps: Kanban, Trello, Todoist, Toodledo, RTM, OneNote, Asana, Bullet Journal (paper-based), Pomodoro, Getting Things Done, Eat the Frog, 1-3-5, the One Thing, Google Keep, Google Tasks, Evernote, Notion, Wunderlist and many, many more. I am a To-Do List junkie.

On top of that, I seem to need to keep a foot in both the analog and digital worlds. A purely digital system doesn't work so well for me. I need something on paper to jot things down, to take notes, whatever. On top of that, my email inbox sometimes functions as a To-Do List. While I aspire to Inbox Zero, sometimes it's easier to leave an email in my Inbox to remind me... "right... need to handle that"... or... "right, waiting for a response on that".

A Shift in Attitude
A few weeks ago, I could feel the frustration/overwhelm/disillusionment building within me. There was soooo much to get done! Every day, I would review my modified BuJo To-Do List at the end of the day and push forward a bunch of incomplete tasks. I'd review my Remember the Milk app and see so many snowplowed To-Dos... And yes, I have tried the Eisenhower Matrix of urgency/importance... doesn't work for me. At this point, everything is Urgent AND Important! Or at least... it feels that way.

I get to the point where I want someone else to just say: "OK, here's your next to-do... and when you're done with that... I'll give you the next one." I don't want to have to make the decisions... to scan a list with dozens of items and try and figure out what is next. Argh!!

A few weeks ago, I could feel a To-Do List break-up coming and thought... "this is ridiculous - there must be a better way". Right now, I'm staying with Remember the Milk for my overall catch-all of information that I can review on a weekly basis. For my day-to-day and week-ahead planning, however, I'm considering several tweaks.

1. Make each task an actual "task", not a project! I have this annoying tendency to write "redo garden beds" on my To-Do List. It is not an actionable task and so my goal is to break each project down into small, actionable items. One of my big issues is that I overestimate how long something will take. But breaking down a task/project into sub-tasks, the entropy hurdle is less. Or so thinks my rational brain.
   
   This would require a shift in attitude and execution on my part. To recognize that I am a bit of an over-achiever and approach my To-Do list with some compassion for myself. I don't have to climb the mountain... I just have to take the next step.
2. Write the reason for a to-do list item - not just what it is. For a slightly ridiculous example: Normally I would write "windshield wipers" on my to-do list, knowing that the current ones are leaving horrible streaks. But that might sit on my to-do list for weeks for any number or reasons. My new strategy, beyond breaking the task down into sub-tasks (buy windshield wipers, install windshield wipers) is to write it thusly: "install new windshield wipers so we can drive to Victoria safely tomorrow".
   
   I came across the idea of writing the To-Do List as if I were writing it for someone else. It made sense and it adds a certain clarity around priority and urgency. Again, this requires a shift in both attitude and execution. At first glance, I'm thinking this might help me prioritize things better... rather than seeing everything as Urgent AND Important.
3. Write a DONE list in my notebook. I used to have a running To-Do List in Remember the Milk and out of that would write a daily To-Do List into my notebook. The same To-Do List that was only half-done at the end of the day. Shifting away from that... and instead writing a Done List in my notebook, because there are a lot of things that I get done that never even make it on to the To-Do List.
   
   I've always been a person who looks ahead. I don't rest on my laurels, but am always jumping ahead, looking at what is still to come. The DONE list is a way for me to appreciate what I have done in a day and focus on the complete rather than the incomplete.
4. Schedule tasks into my day. Apparently, many millionaires (and probably billionaires) do NOT have a To-Do List... they just have a calendar. Huh. I have tried blocking time before but... actually scheduling things... in a realistic way? Not so much.
   
   I think part of my reluctance to look at a calendar-based system is a left-over twitch effect from when I was care-giving for my Dad. All of my careful time-block schedules went out the window during a very unpredictable time. My life is slightly more predictable now... perhaps it is time to try calendars again.

A Balancing Act
Part of my fixation with time and to-do lists right now is this... I have noticed that I will go for a walk with my partner when she is home. But when she is not home, I won't go for a walk. I know that a walk is good for me. I know this... and yet... when I am home alone, there is always something "more important" to do. This is perplexing to me...

I've tried adding "walk" to my to-do list. I can't tell you how often it gets postponed or ignored. Apparently I have no trouble prioritizing others... just myself.

Right now, I am trying to rejig by life by scheduling tasks into my calendar. And the first things to go on the calendar are self-care activities - like walks, reading and eating healthy meals (which always takes longer so my temptation is to take short-cuts and skip the healthy bits). Once my self-care items are blocked into my day, I have a better sense of how much time I actually have for other tasks. And it then becomes easier to prioritize what absolutely needs to get done today and in the coming days.

I've known about the rocks and the mason jar for a while now and have tried various ways of implementing it. Important things first... then smaller things. When I look at the picture here though... I can see how the left mason jar would result in my current sense of overwhelm... "OMG!!! I don't have enough time for these things!!" Tis very true... So this time, I'm putting my intentionality behind creating the right mason jar...

I'm planning a week ahead and I really have to watch myself or this little over-achiever will try and schedule too much into a day. I am trying to build in some white/flex/blank/down/transition time. If I find that I have some flex time in the day because things went quicker than anticipated, I can regroup, see where I'm at and maybe tackle a few of the smaller tasks that always need to be done - cleaning the toilet, doing dishes, flipping a load of laundry into the dryer, etc. It always amazes me what I can get done in 15 minutes, if I just put my head down and do it.

The idea is that my self-care activities are inviolable. If my schedule said "Walk with friend", I would make that appointment. I would never blow off my friend and not show up for the walk, barring a legitimate emergency. But if my schedule says "Walk [for me]", I somehow see that as optional and an appointment that I can keep... or not.

Sooo... my Small Step this week is to keep my appointments with myself. Treat myself with the same courtesty that I treat others. Wish me luck.