sad to report the snowstorm fucked with all the good habits i was building. I was extremely stressed being trapped inside for a week, awaiting power outages and possibly trees falling on my house, frozen pipes, and being worried about my cat because their canned food shipment being delayed due to the ice. (Cat is doing good, we have dry food here so they weren’t going hungry, just forced to eat their not-favorite food for a few days. Me too, buddy.)

I think it’s important to talk about this stuff, because habit building/self improvement/recovery is usually more like an upward trend on a chart with lots of little dips and gains and not one continuous line upward. I honestly struggled a lot with my cannabis use that week, i used it a lot as a stress reliever and backslid on reducing. BUT it was an extremely stressful week, and i didn’t backslide *that *far, and my plan was never to completely quit anyway, just be less reliant on it. Still, i was able to keep myself from smoking for long periods of the time the last few days when i’ve been feeling better mentally and can do stuff like go outside and have less general anxiety about my safety/home.

So during that time i was trapped inside, i couldn’t garden. BUT i did actually read a gardening book every day or do seed research so i’m counting that. Yesterday was the first day in… 8 days? i could do anything outside. I just moved a bunch of sticks that fell from the windstorms into a border for one of my garden beds since the ground was still a bit snowy. I’m feeling a bit unwell today, but if i feel better i’m hoping to weed around some of the younger plants. Turns out dandelions are actually great for the soil and bringing up a lot deep nutrients up into the topsoil, and are good for pollinators, so i’m going to keep some around, but i need to make sure there is no other plants around the babies so they have room in the soil for their roots. I hope all the plants survived the 17F icestorm weather. I protected the sensitive ones, but i don’t know if it’ll be enough. Oh and i ordered some seeds for inside, microgreen radish seeds, mung beans, and cinnamon basil. When i feel better i’m going to mix up some veganic potting soil using a recipe a friend gave me and repot a plant that’s been in a broken container for the last six months lol.

My “be active” plan also suffered. It dropped below freezing here and between stress and the cold i just felt like hibernating and had very little energy. The heating system in this place is honestly pretty bad lol. My fingers were going numb just sitting at my desk with the heat supposedly turned up to max. I did some half hearted stretching and called it good. But now i’m on day 3 streak of being active now that it’s warmed up and i’m not snowed in.

So i didn’t do well last week under stressful conditions but now that things are more normal, i’m doing a lot better and are back to making progress in areas i care about :)