Time & Spoon Management

Do you ever feel like most of your time is wasted being sick?? 

When I am going through a particularly bad spell, all I focus on is listening to my body and allowing it as much time as it needs to rest... 

Everything else can wait. 

But then I'll have these moments where I will completely panic about all the different things I have been hoping to do, and how much time I wasted 'being sick'. 

With my Crohn's, I am spending hours just sitting in the washroom. Usually in the evening I could be in there for up to 5 hours.... in pain, struggling, my intestines cramping every couple of minutes... every single night.  

Then my fatigue is so great during flare-ups that the rest of the day is spent resting. Sometimes I'll be able to read, sometimes I won't. Sometimes I'll get a few household chores done, sometimes I won't. 

It means that any extras - any little projects - get put off, over and over and over again. Not because I am procrastinating or have lost interest, and definitely not because I don't technically have the time. I simply don't have the health; I don't have the workable time to get other things done. I run out of spoons by the time I get dressed, if I put anything on apart from pjs or 'home clothes'. 

For instance, this summer I have several small projects that I would like to work on. Now, I *should have* started some of these hobby projects back in April. However, since my Crohn's has been so flared up, I spent the overwhelming majority of that time resting. In bed. Managing a few chores every few days. Literally just surviving day to day. 

Now that it's nearly July, I am sitting here panicking about the time I have left in the summer to actually fulfill my summertime to-do-wish list.... because let's face it, every 'to do' list is a wish list... I never truly know if I will have the physical health/energy to accomplish it all. 

Being so sick that I cannot work doesn't mean that I have all of this free time to do all the things that I want to do. It means that I waste a lot of time just being sick. So much time is wasted watching reruns and movies I have seen a thousand times so that I don't have to focus on anything but resting, but not sleeping. I set goals for myself every single day... but usually I set out 1 or 2 too many. I either get them all done but sacrifice my next two days to do so, or I spread it out over the week.

The spoonie life can be really frustrating. Especially when the amount of spoons I get per day is different each day.