Power Saving Mode
My battery is at 5%. I wake up at 5:25 a.m. and can’t fall back asleep. I know I can do two things: lay in bed for hours or get up and make myself scrambled eggs and coffee, and despite the caffeine kick (which I never feel anyway, probably because I overuse it daily) fall back asleep for a few hours before I have to wake up again and do things.
Ordinary things. The ones that normally I would do in an autopilot mode. I mark off these tasks in my head. A task: take out the trash, another task: take a shower, buy groceries, fill the cat bowl with food, iron clothes, respond to messages, etc. I have to remind myself to do all that. Because these tasks that have turned into habits over the years are no longer my routine habits. I am in a power saving mode. I need to be very selective with what I will spend my energy on.
Last year when I graduated (like right after the ceremony) I was sitting in a waiting room to see a therapist. Still wearing my gown and with my cap in my hand I told her that I was feeling overwhelmed to say the least, and that something that had happened almost 10 months ago just then decided to surface. And I couldn’t understand why right at that moment. I had thought those feelings hadn’t existed. Why now?
She told me calmly that our body and our mind is way smarter than we give them the credit. When we feel a great deal of stress our mind's main task is to survive. In order to make things more bearable it pretty much "extracts" the file that causes our worries and hides it somewhere on a hard drive aka your brain. This file is a virus. It can be hidden, but eventually it will find its way back. You just really never know how long it will take for that to happen.
The time between when your mind hides the file and when it detonates I call the power saving mode. The whole point is for you to stay at whatever battery percentage you are for just a little longer till you find a charger. You collect all the power you have and only use it for the necessary things. The things that people do every day. Buy coffee, pay your bills, get new prescription glasses, lock the door in your apartment, be polite. And hopefully when that virus file surfaces back up, you will be more charged and ready for it.
What I have come to realize is that your mind knows better. When we get frustrated, upset over something, or even anxious it pretty much thinks: “Here we go again. What do you have for me this time?” Because no matter what we bother it with the mind knows how to protect itself from you. So instead of being angry at my own laziness (or what normally would qualify as laziness when you are at a higher charge) I appreciate the power savings mode. Because I know that it is temporary. I have seen myself at 90% and at 2%. And I have always stayed me. So if my mind decides we need to take it slow and just chill in this limbo for a while, I am up for it.
The mind knows better, so I just acknowledge it. And at some point I know that the charge will come. Because everyone was designed to have a full battery.
Photographer: Odin+Ixie
