On losing momentum.

At the start of this year, I was going gung ho towards making progress on my New Year’s resolutions, my goals. I lost ten pounds by going to the gym three times per week and cutting down on snacks and sugar. I was meal prepping lunches and making my own coffee to spend less money. I was writing a blog post every single week.

And then I started losing momentum.

It wasn’t a slow, heedless, loss of momentum. It happened pretty sharply.

In March I was working on a project at work and by the end of the month realized that in order to meet my April 30 deadline I was going to have to start working through lunch, working early and late hours, working on the weekend.

Basically I was going to have to work 24/7 in order to get it done in time.

I worked twice as many hours, a full two months worth of work, in those 30 days. That left little time for anything else besides sleeping or eating. And, really, no time for either of those.

I barely had time to breathe, let alone prep meals, cook, make coffee, write, go to the gym, be social.

I woke up, got Starbucks, went to work, stayed late, stopped for tacos or something from the Whole Foods hot bar, came home, ate, and passed out. And I repeated that cycle day after day.

When the month was finally over, when my project finally launched, I was too exhausted to want to do anything with my free time but crawl into bed and binge-watch Top Chef. I was too exhausted to even think about how to get my life back on track.

“I’ll start going to the gym again next week,” I’d tell myself, “I just need a moment to rest.”

And then, my cat got sick and needed surgery, which was an emotional and financial drain that kicked me when I was already down. I did nothing for two weeks but come home and sit in the bedroom with him and watch TV on my laptop and cry.

Things are now back to normal. My cat is doing fine, my job is back to being boring. But all of that motivation, all of that momentum, I had going into the year is now gone.

I am too exhausted to wake up early to go to the gym or write. I come home with all these ideas of being productive, telling myself all day that when I get home I am going to work on my blogs or clean or work out, and then just veg on the couch instead.

I still haven’t been back to the gym. I still go to Starbucks every morning because I wake up too late to make coffee myself. I still haven’t gone back to writing consistently. My apartment is still a mess. I have rotting asparagus from the farmer’s market in the fridge.

I have all of these things I want to do. All of these things I need to do. And all of these goals I want to work towards and accomplish. But all I do is crawl into bed and stay there.

What do you do when you’re not feeling motivated? What do you do when you’ve lost all momentum to accomplish your goals? How do you get back on track after a setback? How do you force yourself to be productive when all you want to do is sleep?