June 2023 Reflections #WBOYC

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It’s the end of the first half of 2023. Wow, can you imagine? I’m joining What’s Been On Your Calendar? (#WBOYC). Here goes.

Honestly, I can’t remember much of the first few weeks of June, other than the fact that I was extremely motivated to get moving. I had signed up for two Apple Watch challenges. Suffice it to say that motivation quickly diminished and I finally broke my 300-odd day streak of reaching my movement goal yesterday. That is, I broke it last Saturday too but cheated by lowering my movement goal for that day.

In other respects, the month has been meh too. I only wrote twelve blog posts, including this one, and hardly have been crafting. I mostly spent my days playing dice and the odd card game. I think I might be depressed, but more likely it’s the shitty circumstances of living in my current care home.

However, I’m pretty sure my staff think I’m doing well, as I’ve been in the communal room more. The reason is mostly to connect to somewhat familiar people, because I’ve mostly been assigned completely new temp workers. When I try to communicate my discomfort with this, I’m usually met with rather curt remarks that the staff have no obligation to explain their decisions to me and then, when I spiral further into meltdown, I’m met with harsher and harsher actions from the staff.

The month of June is, of course, also my birthday month. I had my sister and her family over in Lobith last Saturday, which was okay, though a bit stressful. I spent Tuesday, which was my actual birthday, in Apeldoorn with my parents and spouse. I really loved the Thai food we ate.

In the health department, I have been doing okay. My cardio fitness level has been declining again, unfortunately and is now just barely in the below-average range. I gained a little weight too, but truthfully my weigh-in on May 31 showed the lowest weight I’d been in forever, so I’m not worried about that. After all, I’m still at a healthy BMI.

How was your June?

20 thoughts on “June 2023 Reflections #WBOYC”

  2. Sorry to hear it’s been a difficult month for you and that your birthday was stressful. Thai food though always has the power to do a little uplifting. Here’s hoping July is better.

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  4. I am glad you had a good birthday supper with your parents and spouse. Family birthday time can be very stressful, most of us can relate to that. Hope you met your July fitness goals and get good care at your facility.

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    1. Thank you so much. Well, re the care situation, I won’t be receiving good care here, but am hoping I can move to a more suitable home sooner rather than later.

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  5. How come the staff have no obligation to explain their decisions to you? I mean, I don’t know, if that’s how it usually works in care homes, then I guess that’s life and you can only accept it, and I understand that it’s way easier for them, especially with intellectually disabled clients I guess, but it seems insanely infantilising to me, especially when you explicitly say you want an explanation. It’s not like you’re a child, so I guess you have the right to know what decisions they make about you and why. Even with children, stuff is usually consulted with parents, at school or something. So yeah, to me that’s weird and would be really stressful and frustrating to me in your position too, it’s really destabilising dealing with unfamiliar people all the time. I always hated having to deal with unfamiliar staff at the boarding school as I found it very stressful, and I think it must be all the worse at a care home where in theory you’re supposed to feel at least kind of like at home as much as possible. So sorry to hear June was crappy for you.

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    1. Thanks so much for your kind words and sorry I’m so late getting back to you. For whatever reason, I couldn’t reply to your comment from the Jetpack app. Well I understand staff don’t have to provide me with details involving other clients when explaining why they make the decisions they do, and since I’m considered more part of “the group” than a one-on-one client even though I have one-on-one as much as I have alone time and hardly ever function in the group, other clients often are the reason I receive less than optimal care. However, my being considered part of “the group” is also a decision and not one the authorities in charge of my ExtraCare (what I refer to here as “one-on-one”) funding have made. After all, it was largely different at my old care home.

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    1. Thank you. Yes, normally my birthday is the stressful event in June, but this year, while it may’ve contributed to the stress, there were other things too.

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    1. Thanks so very much! My birthday is always quite stressful, so that probably did contribute to the month of June not being the best month.

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  8. Here’s hoping July is a better month for you Astrid. Thanks for joining us for WBOYC despite it not being the best of months for you and happy birthday for June!

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