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The Necessity of Rest
It’s not lazy to do what you need to do.
I had Friday and Monday off work for Memorial Day this year. Lucky, I know. Don’t worry, I paid my dues working holiday weekends for many years, those of you who like to keep track of such things. I know how fortunate I am and I appreciate it. No need to comment and point that out.
Anyway, I had plans for this weekend. We have a huge street sale coming up next week that I wanted to get ready for. I have an event on Friday to prepare for and a house to clean in anticipation of meeting a Child’s New Girlfriend in the next week or so. I also wanted to get to the lake to see family.
Some of that happened. Most didn’t.
What happened? I was exhausted. I chose to rest.
I have a lengthy history of overextending myself. The problem is, I have too many things I want to do and not enough time to do them all. In addition to my teaching job which takes a massive amount of energy (8th grade. I’ll leave that there), I’m heavily, and happily, involved with my community theatre. We just finished a huge show, La Cage au Folles. If you’re not familiar, it’s a really important show about accepting who you are and not hiding it. It also has a lot of beautiful drag queens who need wigs and the maintenance that goes with them. I was part of the team that helped with the wigs and while I LOVED doing that, it required a lot of time. It was totally worth it, though, to help get that message out there, especially in this scary time for our LGBTQIA+ community, and to work with such amazing people.
Plus, I’m trying to get my own business up and running while making sure I don’t ignore my family in the process. And, oh yeah, writing.
I also don’t get enough sleep. I go to bed later than I should because I like the alone time at the end of the day and I hate going to bed early. I know this isn’t good for me, yet I do it. It’s hard to explain, but I sort of feel like I’m rebelling over the system that makes me have to wake up early every day. As my Middle Child would say, “Stickin’ it to the man”, except it only affects me. Sigh.
All of these things added together made for some extreme tiredness. I could feel the toll it was taking on my body and by Thursday, I knew that my big plans for productivity…
