Sometimes I feel a bit like a firefighter in an old-fashioned bucket brigade. I wind up spilling things from one bucket into another bucket into the next bucket until I am able to put out the fire. But sometimes, what's contained in the buckets is not compatible with what's in the next bucket, and I wind up making the fire bigger and not smaller, making more frustration for everyone.
I'm sure you do the same. You have buckets for work, for home, for school, for activities, etc. Here is a list of my typical buckets and what's in them.
Home Bucket: This bucket contains water, that which sustains me always. It's got my children, my husband, our cats, my home with all its glorious comfort and messes and some clutter and some serene space. I try to de-clutter it and keep it open and free as much as possible, but then I have nooks and crannies stuffed with books and old photos. I am not a materialistic person - I don't value expensive shoes, purses, jewelry. When I am not at work, I'm generally in yoga pants and a comfortable shirt. I have fibromyalgia and cloth often aggravates my skin so I'm all about comfort, baby. Slippers and soft cotton and many different pillows in various shapes and sizes so I can write and read and play games wherever I need to in order to be comfortable that day. Soft cats to cuddle and children whose company I truly enjoy, even on rough days. I love having friends I bring into my home. The home bucket is my place of safety and joy.
Work Bucket: This bucket contains sand. Sometimes this is not the right thing to mix with water, as it will just sink to the bottom without proper handling and then you have a mess that's hard to pour out. As I'm sure you can imagine, my line of work is sometimes frustrating and often fulfilling. Sometimes I get bogged down in things that happen at work, and I have a hard time letting go of them when I get home. I try to separate work from home as much as I can - when you work in an industry that has such a far-reaching and personal impact, you need to compartmentalize to keep your sanity. I spend time at work thinking about how to help people, how to tweak my performance so that I am helping my clients be their best selves and achieve the self-sufficiency that they want and that I know is within their reach. I look at my metrics, my successes, my failures, and I try to dissect what was a success and what didn't work - why did good or bad happen? Is this repeatable? It's hard because every client is different, and every barrier to housing and stability is different, but there ARE things that can be repeated to make a better case. It just requires a fluid approach and a knowledge of the population served. But it can be very emotionally draining, and stick to my bones, like wet sand. This bucket is limited in size but always full. My work friends displace some of the sand with fluffy air, making it a lot less likely to get clumpy.
Arts Bucket: I love art. I love drawing, I love singing, I love writing, I love helping my kids understand art and want to pour their souls and hearts into art as well. Art is my life-blood, but it has to not be allowed to consume me. I cannot spend all night writing. I can't still be writing at 3 AM - that's a big no-no. So this bucket is filled with oil and it cannot be thrown at the flames. It shimmers and shines and settles on my skin, making it repellent against clinging sand. It, too, must be limited in size - if only because I want to make sure the Home Bucket gets enough attention and the Work Bucket does not suffer.
Bipolar Bucket: This bucket is filled will swill and shit and all things that are, in and of themselves, useful but do not work well with anything else. I do not say my bipolar is useful - but having boundless energy can be useful. Manic joy can be useful. Calm sadness can be useful, as a break. All these things feed into the arts bucket - often when I write it is because I need to write out the bad. Well, it used to be. Lately it's more about art and less about shoveling excess shit from this bucket. This bucket is never full. It's a big bucket, but there's just a fine layer in the bottom that I don't let get past the, oh, 1/4 mark. It's been years since this bucket has been any problem whatsoever, but this bucket exists and I must see it, and I must know it's there, so that I can make sure it's not silently filling behind me where I am not paying attention. Shit and swill aren't a problem as long as you don't let them build up.
Pain Bucket: With fibromyalgia, there's considerable pain. It's a hard thing to understand if you don't suffer from pain on a regular basis. I don't take pain medicine typically - I have a migraine medicine I will take sometimes, I will take a muscle relaxer if my muscles are spasming and won't let go. In general, I manage my fibromyalgia by keeping moving, using heat, using a massager (I use a Hitachi wand to release the strain in muscles that will absolutely not let me rest) and by asking my husband to apply pressure to places I know need pressure. Also, I de-stress. The more stress I have, the smaller the pain bucket gets. It's changeable in size, see. When I have very low stress levels and I keep active, the bucket's really big. And therefore the pain, which is something like molten lead in the bucket, doesn't fill it and I can just keep that on the back-burner. But if I get stressed and I don't take self-care measures to relax and be happy, the bucket shrinks and the pain metal, which is pretty much constant, fills the bucket and I absolutely can't take it. Therefore the key to managing it is not medication, it's stress management and relaxation. I'm always going to have pain. The key is how I deal with that.
It helps me to understand my life when I look at my compartmentalization. For my line of work, keeping things in different compartments is crucial. I can't let work stress me in life or the pain bucket shrinks and fills. I can't let arts consume me or the bipolar bucket starts to get too full. I can't forget to use the arts bucket or all other buckets fail. It's a big resource management game, using all my buckets in the right way, but it's how I keep my life happy and healthy. I look at it that fibromyalgia doesn't have to keep me down, and bipolar doesn't have to make me feel less whole. I'm whole and I'm happy - even when things suck, I just pay more attention to the buckets that DON'T suck and move things about between buckets until I re-balance my life the way it needs to be for it to be the very most awesome.
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