Winter is my least favorite season. Except for Christmas and my anniversary, I pretty much hate it. It’s cold. It’s dark. It’s the time of year I really struggle.

This winter, I’ve left a job mid-year. It’s on my conscience. I grew up Catholic, so there’s always something on my conscience.

In fact, if there isn’t anything, my brain will actually work hard to find something to feel bad about. Even something that happened a long time ago. I know, it’s messed up.

And, in fairness to Catholicism, I don’t really blame my religious upbringing for my unusual abundance of guilt. It was kind of one of those unfunny Leah jokes. Spirituality is very confusing for children who are raised by a parent who suffers from mental illness.

My mother considered herself a born-again Christian. And she imposed all of her beliefs onto us. By the time I had graduated college, I was at odds with many of her opinions.

But I digress.

I’ve been trying my best to keep busy, assign myself tasks to avoid thinking too much and spiraling. Part time jobs, organizing, wrapping presents, putting together furniture.

Thinking too much is one of my biggest problems. While I don’t want to push away issues that really do need processing, I don’t want to dwell, either. Knowing exactly how much mental attention to devote to something has always been an area of weakness for me.

Thinking too much generally brings me down, which is why I try to avoid it.

But here I am, thinking about thinking. I think they call that metacognition.

I should start thinking about doing and get my butt in gear. I have more furniture to put together before I go to work. But my head hurts.

Anyway, I know I need to be careful. Because it’s winter, and because my time is slightly less structured right now, it would be easy for me to slide back into depression.

Is that what’s happening? Am I becoming depressed again? It feels very similar to before I went back into teaching. And before I returned to teaching, I was depressed.

While I was teaching, there was no time for depression. Pretty much all I did was work-sleep-repeat.

Is that why I’m having such a hard time staying on plan? I wonder.

Whatever it is, I need to get ahold of the situation before it spins out of my control. This can’t happen right now. This doesn’t work for me. I have surgery in less than a month. I can’t be gaining weight at this point.

I need to lay down with this headache. 🤕