Time to Rest

froschkind

I’ve been battling with regular updates here. Thinking I was just distracted or (gasp) lazy, I gave myself a pretty hard time. After a serious exhaustion/dehydration attack (embarrassing) a couple weeks ago I’m coming to terms with the fact that I have just been flat out overwhelmed. And that is something I wasn’t planning on during the laid off - unemployment - employment process.

I actually assumed I would have endless hours in the day and really did my best to fill all that time productively. I took on new projects. I bounced from one contract job to another then from one babysitting gig to another to make ends meet. I took a part time job and still continued to fill my time with to-dos like I had the time to fill.

What I didn’t realize is the amount of mental exhaustion this takes. All the worry, the stress of juggling completely different jobs, the over-commitments all add up to one very crazy life. And the assumption that since a good chunk of your time is spent at home or in coffee shops is rest enough is a bad one to make. Because chances are that time is also full of email writing, web searching, off-hours working, and worrying.

So I’ve fueled up on Gatorade. I'm making myself sleep decent hours. I'm giving this thing called "rested" a try. And I'm really trying to enjoy my life again. If you’re unemployed or going through the damn lay-off process take a word from the now wise – it's a-okay to say "no" sometimes.