Summer Goals; chronic illness, training, travelling, change

I’ve briefly talked about having mixed feelings about this summer. I don’t know how interesting this post is really, because it’s kind of a mix of bookish goals, survival plans and the fact that I view summer as my new year with resolutions and all. Share any thoughts or questions you might have, I rarely get offended.

I’m the person you want to have with you in a crisis. Since I was a kid, I just act super rationally and deal with it. But what I’m scared of happening this summer is me 1) feeling stuck in a place or around people that I feel is harming (see escape plans) 2) being away from all support through friends and daily routine, making me less equipped to handle bad things 3) dissociating completely because of family/pain/past trauma 4) ending up in the hospital like last year unprepared and completely losing my shit at my unfortune. So this post is mostly for me just having something to refer to solutions if these things do come true.

About summer

I live for the summer. I love the ocean, as you might’ve guessed by the strange name of this blog, and I just feel at peace getting to spend my time like I want, which is mostly swimming, recovering and reading. I’m in and out of hospitals and constantly catching up on school during the rest of the year, but summer has always been my time to breathe. I should be excited about this summer, but the things that has kept me going these past months is in comparison routine, stability and friends. Of not looking too far into the future and the worries that lies ahead. I’m going to need goals to not let everything I’ve got going slip out of my hands.

My goals

Redesign graphics on this blog. I started it with clear ideas and just never had the time to make it as aesthetically pleasing as I wanted. Just make a cohesive thing, how hard can it be. And better quality, because look at the image of this post.

Get a routine to my writing. I’m not claiming I can finish the first draft of my somewhat resembling a novel, but I want to go from writing a lot in a couple weeks and then taking break over the next month to a more healthy routine. I’m very all or nothing kind of person, but I can’t continue writing if it’s going to occupy all my mind and become so obsessive over it at the most annoying times. A weekend of that is fine, two weeks is too draining in addition to school. How do people freaking write?!

Actually get a routine and structure to my day in general. I love being spontaneous, and my summer is based on that, with little plans. The problem is that I fall apart all of a sudden without some kind of base routine. It’s connected with having chronic pain, where with a base routine I know how much energy daily things take. Also I shouldn’t eat X hours before doing a really fun thing, or I’ll be in more pain.

Pack for vacation and then moving. This will be a thing in late june and then again in august. I’m very excited and terrified at once. I currently live in my late grandparents house and my grandma was a light hoarder, meanign we’ve been throwing out things for the past five years, but there’s still more things to get rid of before we’re renting it out. And then my stuff has to be sorted to “going to uni”, “going to loft” and “going on vacay” as well.

Start training. Have I said that summer is like my new years? But honestly, I need to start training in some sense to recover. I’ve been in bad shape since being so ill last summer and I’m just starting to regain muscle. I need training as a stress-releaser for the fall, and starting to build that foundation from scratch is going to require a lot of work. Here’s my prediction: I’ll start with yoga just because it’s softer on the body, grow so bored of it in max the 2nd week, start scouting for martial arts gyms which will all be closed and start swimming a lot instead. My lungs are still too fucked up for straight up running, I think.

Catch up with my reading: both physics science books, writing advice and others. I know I add a lot of books on my TBR every bi-weekly update. Please know that they will not be read in the near future. My TBR is currently 434 books! Another goal is definitely to shorten my TBR, which I have a few methods I want to try through blog posts, but if you have any advice throw it my way. I’ll post a summer TBR soon, because there’s some books I just have to get through.

Etc: spend time with friends (who’s understandably working a lot), spending as much time in the ocean as possible, start learning Python programming (how? I don’t know yet).

Where am I going?

Summer town on the coast of Norway: It’s the place I grew up and then decided to move from, with good reasons.

• The positives: constantly surrounded by water, lots of places to go out with a boat, a family cabin and lots of bathing spots, a couple friends.
• The problems: my family there, who have always refused to accept that I’m chronically ill in any way (even as I came out of surgery last year) and I feel the need to confront them all for the sake of my also chronically ill little brother. It’s something that is a big goal this summer, just because I’m 20 years old and it’s the first time I don’t rely on them anymore. I just feel like sometimes you got to make decisions and mark what the criteria for continuing a good relationship with people need to be. I learned that when I was 16 years old refusing to pick up the phone out of a, now looking back, scarily mature moral decision. It sparked a little change in treatment. It’s time for a bigger one.

Denmark: the first escape plan (also will be there at least a week in july).

• The positives: extremely nice aunt who lives there, extremely good food, quiet enough for lots of reading, baking and recovering. I’m going to buy a year’s worth of tea.
• The negatives: the countryside, so no people around. Can’t spend the whole summer there, or I’ll permanently become a hermit, which is only bad because I won’t be able to go back into regularly society for a while and that clashes with plans to go to uni.

Amsterdam? My second escape plan. My third escape plan is tenting at the beach. I know where I’ll get the equipment already. It might seem like I’ve put too much thought into this, but at the same time it’s been very necessary before.

Relate to any of this? Are you doing something special this summer? (I have more free time than most, I know)