Yesterday, I had huge plans. My daughter was going to be at an overnight at her summer camp, so my plan was to dig in and write ALL THE THINGS. I thought I could probably power through a good 20,000 words. I’ve done it before, I could absolutely do it then.
Then I wound up having to bring the dog to the vet. And I got some not so awesome news about sales, which frankly didn’t fill me with the urge to sit down and work. Next thing I knew, I’d gotten through less than half of the work I’d planned, and it was 4:30 AM.
That was ugly.
What was uglier was today. Obviously, I needed to get through the work I didn’t do yesterday, right? I was too exhausted to even look at the screen for most of the day. It took me eight hours to write a thousand words.
I can usually get through five thousand words in six hours, with time for a half hour walk in the middle.
And, of course, none of the issues that made it so difficult to write last night had gone away this morning.
Why am I bringing this up? Well, I had the opportunity yesterday to take a step back and say, “You know what? I am not in the right head space for this. I’m going to take the night off, go out and recalibrate, and come back to this tomorrow.” I didn’t do that. I told myself that it would be wrong to do that. I felt guilty for not taking the opportunity, with my daughter away for the night, to truly focus on my work with no distractions.
I tried to maximize my time, but I ignored my own well-being. As a result, I lost last night, and I lost pretty much all of today.
Self-care doesn’t have to be expensive. I had a few options last night. I could have gone out to an animal rescue fundraiser at a local craft beer bar. I could have grabbed my crochet project and watched Netflix. You can curl up under some blankets with a good book – obviously I’d prefer that they were mine but hey, I’m not picky. Here and here are some interesting ideas for self-care.
This is a conversation I had with two of my doctors this year. The whole point of this post was to demonstrate, with myself as an example, that ignoring my own needs in favor of “productivity” actually cost me. Culturally, we’re in a place right now where there’s a lot of pressure to be always on, always working, always producing. We feel guilty if we’re caught doing anything simply for pleasure, or for relaxation.
We can’t live like that. We need to be able to take a step back and recharge, reassess. Otherwise, we risk burnout, illness, and worse.