Crawling Out Of The Funk

I was jolted awake and my eyes slowly opened as the alarm on my phone sounded.  My phone read 4:00 PM when I rolled over on the couch to shut it off.  I pulled my blanket off, tossed it to the side, and sat up on the couch, rubbing my eyes.  It was Christmas Day.  Earlier that morning, my aunt and uncle had a group over to their house for a Christmas Day brunch and I had gone over the afternoon and night before for some Christmas Eve festivities.  When I returned from their house that afternoon around 2:00 PM, I felt stressed out and thought that a nap would help calm me down.  When I finished rubbing my eyes, I looked around.  My blinds were closed and my apartment was dark and eerie.  Despite the exuberant family time that I enjoyed over the last couple of days, I felt empty and hollow inside.  Outside of the holiday season, my personal and professional life was changing drastically, and very quickly.  I was healing from a failed marriage, work was extremely busy, and my department at work was undergoing a major personnel shift.  In November, my company offered me an opportunity to relocate from Los Angeles to the executive office in Mountain View, California to work under the new CFO.  I had mixed emotions about leaving the city that I called home for the past seven years, but I was also eager for a fresh start in Silicon Valley.  After a series of meetings and discussions, I accepted the offer.  I had spent the prior week in Mountain View, working out of my new office and getting acquainted with my soon to be new home.  It was an exciting experience and I was looking forward to the move, but as I sat there on Christmas Day, I only had four days left in Los Angeles.  I had secured an apartment in Sunnyvale, given notice to my current landlord that I was going to be moving out at the end of December, and told my managers at work that I would be fully moved to Silicon Valley and ready to work by January 2nd, 2019.  During the ten days or so leading up to Christmas, I had been drinking a little more than I normally do, not eating very healthy, sleeping too much, and not running as much I should have been.  Whether this unhealthy state was a result of the holiday season and that's just how things are at this time of year, or if the mounting stress and mixed emotions in my personal and professional life had sent me into a downward spiral, I couldn't say.  All I knew was that I was in a funk.

I sat there for a good five minutes in the dark as the late afternoon sun peeked through the cracks of my blinds.  Christmas was always big in my family and I've always looked forward to doing Christmas themed races, dressing up in holiday themed attire, attending holiday parties, and generally being festive and jolly.  But due to all the changes in my life during the holiday season, I missed out on a lot of the fun activities that I relished greatly throughout December every year.  Christmas is my favorite holiday and I was supposed to be feeling happy.  But instead, it felt like something was missing.  If there's anything I can't stand, it's sitting on my ass, feeling sorry for myself.  I have accepted the fact that sometimes in life, I need to accept pain and even welcome it, but I've always hated it when people are miserable and don't take any action to improve their situation.  Life is too short to sit around being mopey and letting the world beat you down.  I thought about my Mom and how much I missed her.  Although I have my own beliefs regarding what happens to people after they die, I don't know much about the afterlife.  But there were two things I knew for sure; I knew my mother was watching over me, and I knew that she wouldn't want me to feel this way.  I would no longer stand for it.  "Okay, come on, get a grip" I finally said to myself out loud.  I stood up, switched on the lamp in my living room, and opened my blinds, allowing the light of the outside world to pour through the window of my sliding door.  I sat back down and began focusing.  The first thing I needed to do was acknowledge that I was feeling upset.  But why?  I just had a great couple of days with family celebrating Christmas.  Lots of people spend Christmas alone, and I was lucky enough to be in the presence of family, but my lack of running, increased alcohol consumption, unhealthy eating, oversleeping, and drastic life changes had been a thorn in my side for the past couple of weeks.  I also had missed out on holiday festivities and hadn't gotten a chance to see my friends lately.  And I was supposed to move in four days.  I couldn't allow this feeling to continue.  I acknowledged that I felt down, figured out the cause of the negative feelings, and now it was time to take action.  I went to my bedroom and put on my running shoes, shorts, a shirt from a Christmas run I had done the year prior, and a Red Wings beanie.  I may not have been able to participate in a sanctioned holiday run, but at least I could do my own.  When I returned from a three mile run around my neighborhood, I immediately felt better.  I thought of my friends.  I hadn't seem any of them lately, but it wasn't too late.  I picked up my phone and began messaging them, wishing them all a happy holiday and asking if they wanted to get together for a goodbye-for-now party on Friday night.  Everyone said yes.  I went to sleep that night, feeling a little more optimistic.

On the night of the 26th, the realization came over me that life was simply moving too fast.  I had a moment of clarity, and again, I needed to take action.  The next morning, I walked over to my landlord's apartment and asked if I could keep my place for another month.  When she said yes, I emailed the landlord of my new building asking if I could move in later on in January instead of on December 30th.  She also said yes.  I then reached out to my boss and told him that rather than moving up to Silicon Valley completely by December 30th, my new plan was to be up there to work during the week, come back to LA on the weekends to move things out of my current apartment and clean it out, and be completely moved in mid-January.  To my delight, he was very understanding, and said that it was fine.  I sat back on my couch and breathed a great sigh of relief.  When Friday night rolled around, ten of my closest running and hiking friends and I congregated at Max's, a popular Mexican restaurant among our group.  The evening was filled with laughter, story telling, and warmth.  I promised everyone that I'd be back to visit often, and we'd meet up in the mountains to share more adventures together.  When I arrived home that night I felt happy and at peace.  Things were starting to get back on track, but I wasn't stopping there.  I woke up on Saturday morning, went for a five mile run, ate a healthy breakfast, and went to therapy.  That evening, after purchasing a new pair of trail running shoes from REI, I really felt like I was coming back.  My new shoes and other REI goodies brought on more excitement.  On Sunday morning, I laced up my new shoes and went for a ten mile trail run in the mountains through the snow, followed by another healthy breakfast.

As I type this, I feel better now that I have at any point in the last two weeks.  I feel as though I've come back, and I've crawled out of the funk that I've been in for the last several days.  I feel more excited and optimistic about the move, things are falling into place, and life is being put back into perspective.  I spoke with my therapist and some friends about the rain cloud that seemed to be over my head for the last couple of weeks, which helped put things even further into perspective.  Those who I spoke with advised me not to be too hard on myself, and offered a fresh perspective, even going as far to say that sometimes being in a funk isn't such a bad thing because it gives us a chance to bring ourselves back out of the hole, creating feelings of hope and accomplishment.  Life is all about ups and downs.  There is a well known Japanese proverb that is often used in motivational situations that goes "fall down seven times, get up eight".  I've accepted the fact that I will fall into a funk here and there, but as long as I can muster the strength to overcome it, that's all that matters.  For this current predicament, the timing couldn't have been better.  I'm glad to be on the other end, and I'm stoked I will be going out of 2018 in style, feeling on top.  Bring on 2019!