One month back at work. If you had told me ten months ago I would be here I wouldn’t have been able to see it. I am so so so proud of myself for even trying to go back. Doing it, attending the management meetings and working out a plan for the quarter and looking for solutions to problems I had forgotten existed are good too but it was the turning up that I am most proud of.

I don’t know what my long term plan is anymore, I always had a goal or a plan to work towards but now I’m choosing to focus on each day and week as they come now, it’s far less overwhelming. I’ve made such a conscious effort to be professional and interested at work, and it’s been hard but doable I’ve found. While at work things are okay it seems, I think I’m holding it all together well which I’m surprised about.

What I really didn’t expect was to not be able to respond to messages or answer the phone to family and friends after work for weeks on end due to sheer exhaustion and social battery depletion. Everything at home feels like it’s taken a back seat and I don’t have a lot of capacity to do the things that have been keeping me going the last few months. It’s hard because now I’m back at work it seems like that is all everyone around me wants to talk about, maybe it’s because it’s easy and ‘normal’? I don’t know, but for me I hate talking about it, probably because I hate that fact that people feel they have something to talk to me about. I’m so over fair weather relationships, I don’t have the capacity or desire for them and something about being back in a more normal world has brought those out it seems.

I’m sure these are all side affects that won’t last forever, but it’s all part of the transition into whatever this new life looks like. It’s absolutely not going back to my old life, however much it may look like that on the surface. I’m not the same person I was before Astrid was born even though to others that’s probably what it looks like. I returned proudly from maternity leave, a mother, even if I’m not rushing off for nursery pick up.