Anyone else feeling like they’ve ‘hit the wall’ recently?
Usually, this is a term we’d relate to running or sport. More recently, though, it’s one that has become a good way of describing the symptoms of lockdown.
Just when we thought we were doing ok, and making great strides in running the course of our greatest endurance test yet...it strikes!
Tiredness, lethargy and a general feeling of having maxed out all motivation.
However, before you start being hard on yourself for not wanting or feeling able to budge off the sofa, consider this...
The quarantine marathon - though not physically taxing in the same way as an actual race - is a significant emotional drain.
This is something that can’t be underestimated in terms of its effect on energy levels and stamina. All that positivity and energy that we maybe started out with was all well and good, but inevitably, stress, worry and a lack of mental stimulation and social interaction can take its toll.
Stumped for how to galvanise a second wind to see us through the weeks ahead, there’s one thing worth considering:
‘Hitting the wall’ in lockdown is a problem for which ‘powering through’ isn’t necessarily the answer.
It might be, instead, that we need to acknowledge the wall that we’ve come up against, and simply sit with it for a while!
Make the wall more comfortable with whatever you have available. Pillows and blankets will do the trick. If you live with someone, invite them to keep you company.
The wall might be hard, but it’s part of an important, much bigger, infrastructure. The one that’s keeping you safe, and which it doesn’t necessarily pay to bulldoze your way through with feigned energy and enthusiasm.
Instead, rest up if you can. Put the kettle on, and see that hitting a wall now and then is scarcely to be avoided when our days are so tightly bound within four of them!