Is It Movember If It Isn’t Public?
This year marks the third year that I have participated in Movember to support Men’s Mental Health. However, this was the first year where I did not post about my participation in Movember or raise any money for Movember. As the month of November comes to a close this year, I have been left with the question, “Was it really Movember if I never posted about it?”
For some, they may view my participation this year as not successful. I didn’t write any articles about Movember and why I participate. I didn’t try to raise money from friends or family. I didn’t post any pictures of my mustache growing. And I didn’t grow a mustache from scratch this year.
There are a number of factors that truly impacted my participation this year.
Job News
On November 1, I announced to my congregation that I would not be continuing in my current role of executive director past our current agreement which ends June 2022. This was not an easy decision and the whole month of November has been filled with emotions. Emotions because I know this is the right decision for me and my family in the short and long term and emotions because I know that I have unfinished business and that the organization is headed in the right direction.
I also had deep emotions as community members reached out to me and wished me the best of luck. I was happy to know that I had touched their lives in some way but also sad because our “relationships” will be changing over the coming months.
I am also uncertain about what the future holds for me professionally and this has caused me stress as I am a planner and have always had a north star guiding me. My north star had been to be an executive director of a synagogue.
Through all of these emotions, I couldn’t wrap my head or heart around promoting my participation in Movember.
My Mustache
For the first time in my three year participation, I decided to not grow a mustache from scratch but to just shave off my beard and leave just my mustache. I did this for multiple reasons:
COVID-19 - Since the beginning of COVID-19 in March 2020, I have had some sort of facial hair because when I don’t my masks do not feel like they fit on me correctly.
Slow Growth - While I am easily able to grow facial hair, for some reason a month’s growth of my mustache has always been slow. In the previous two years, I barely had much of a mustache at the end of Movember. For this year, I wanted people to know I had a mustache.
Doing the Uncomfortable - The concept of Movember is to do something that is uncomfortable or goofy looking. I found that my previous two times participating did not truly make me uncomfortable (except when I dyed it the last day). I wanted this year to feel uncomfortable as I had the mustache and I was just going to let it grow. Let me tell you, a thick mustache is way more uncomfortable as it often times went into my mouth or captured hot chocolate or soup.
Whether “breaking the rules” of Movember or not, my mustache journey was very different this year. The one thing it really did was cause conversations and for that reason, I still raised awareness about my participation in Movember.
My Health
Both my mental and physical health have taken a huge toll… and they are actually all related.
Over the last three months, I have been to the doctor for workups on a number of issues that I have been experiencing. Forgetting names, weight gain, fatigue, sleepless nights, and ear problems. On the outside looking in, these may all seem to be separate issues and correlating to me getting older but the reality is that they can all be tied to my anxiety and depression.
The worse my eating habits have gotten, the worse my sleep has gotten. The worse my sleep has gotten, the worse my exhaustion has gotten. The worse my exhaustion has gotten, the more I began forgetting simple items like people’s names. And finally, other health issues have begun to creep in like my most recent ear problem.
The reality is that while much of this can be tied to my work, the crux of it all is due to my response to COVID-19. Deep down the last 20 months have done a number on me that I cannot explain. At times, I truly lost my motivation because every day began to feel like groundhogs day and nothing was changing. I also began to have a short fuse towards those that I love the most. I also went from somebody that loves to be around others and an extrovert to being someone who is truly struggling being around a group of people.
This whole pandemic has taken a toll on all of us and for me, it has manifested itself mainly in health issues. I am slowing addressing the issues and am going to work on finding a way to handle these better in the future.
While my Movember may have looked different this year in that it was not outward facing, this Movember was truly about me and making space for me to take a step back so I can begin looking forward.