Personal follow-up to "Reflect with Intention"

 Balance is required.

These days I have been physically moving slowly, but I am moving.

I have also been emotionally moving in ways that at first felt slow. But I am moving.

Physically I'm moving slowly lately for these such reasons: I am burnt out, it's making me sick. But it is also because am also making the choice to devote a lot of time and mental space to highly intentional and nuanced reflection that I had been avoiding because they are particularly heavy topics, and I have been very afraid of letting anything else give even a little bit.

Because we have a lot going on, and if underlying difficulties go neglected and unaddressed in favour of going through motions of everyday life, it will be a lot harder to catch up with the mental emotional debt accumulated than catch up with housework.

And someone can help me with catch-up on cleaning if I really need it. I won't go to zero, but I am humble enough to accept help if this is required to carve out the time to truly take off the old personality and put on the new one.

But my friends and family cannot take off the old personality and do my reflections for me.

I will do my best to be balanced about this and not all or nothing; I want the home to be in acceptable physical condition. And I will remind myself to be balanced, instead of spiraling into thought in ways that take me so deep that I am practically nonfunctional.

Lack of adequate physical upkeep (including but not limited to cleaning, nutrition, hygiene, budgeting) can and will impede mental and emotional progress.

But the other side of that coin is neglecting mental emotional upkeep can and will also impede one's ability to keep up with physical needs.

Neglecting to have my mind, heart, and spirit taken care of for this long has led to me being practically nonfunctional for periods of time that get longer and more intense the more problems snowball. So instead of just obsessively cleaning to compensate for emotions I am avoiding, I am doing my best to be relatively clean, while addressing difficult emotions, so that I can make progress and clean well without being so troubled to the point of sickness.