This has been a tremendously taxing last month and I’m glad it’s over.  July seemed long and tedious, and the fact that the AC on my car has been dead for some time didn’t help matters.  Neither did the “check engine” light that just won’t go off.  Neither did the fact that I traded territories with another chaplain as she was doing far too much traveling, only to find now that I’m doing a lot more traveling than I like now.

I kept up with everything and CPE was going great.  But last week killed me.  I had a very busy week with my new caseload and also had to manage the house and kids on my own as my wife was out at a conference.  I plugged through because I had this big goal at the end that I was looking forward to – being an extra in the new Batman film.  But then that got yanked and I felt like I ahd just run a marathon for nothing.

I got really mad and was emotionally all over the place.  Then I felt that I should just never count on anything good happening – that maybe I was holding on to things too hard anc counting on outside things too much.

And that was when I realized that I was exhausted and not taking care of myself.

This was why I was having such a big reaction to something that would have been disappointing but not a crisis event.  Self care for me is really hard, as I just don’t feel like I have the time to do so.  However failure to do so just makes me burn out faster.

Today I had trouble with one of my CPE reflection papers, as I found it really hard to “reflect” on the visit that I was supposed to be writing about.  What was going on spiritually during the visit?  Hard to tell, because right now I don’t feel spiritually connected to myself or anything else, just the stored-up pain in my shoulders that I can’t neck-crack away.

So all this to serve as the reason why I’m taking the rest of the afternoon off!