A Day Off

I gave myself the day off yesterday. That might sound funny, since I work a Mon - Friday, 9-5 job. Well, theoretically anyway. But sometimes you just have to give yourself permission to do nothing.

Now, let me state for the record, that I have seriously lazy sit-around-on-the-couch tendencies. I can easily fritter away an evening, a weekend, maybe even a vacation reading novels, watching some tv, flipping through magazines, and just generally whiling away the hours. But most of the time, there's stuff I need to do, so I try to divide my time between pursuit of laziness and getting things done.

Yesterday, for some reason I just felt exhausted. I went to bed at my usual week day time on Friday night. I slept in - well, after I did the usual morning routine of having George poke me awake at 6:30 am so I can drag myself out of bed, give the cats morning treats, stumble down to the basement and open the window so they can get out into their enclosure for a morning breath of fresh air. After that, seeing no reason to be awake at 6:30 on a Saturday morning, I went back to bed and slept soundly until 9:30. I woke up to find Fred back on his pillow by my head and George sleeping on my legs.

Spoiled? My cats? Can't imagine why you'd think so.

Anyway, I just felt like I was dragging myself around and everything was an effort. I brought in some wood, started a fire in the stove, came back upstairs and my heart was pounding like I'd just been out for a run or something. I had this list in my head of the million things I wanted to do yesterday and I felt so overwhelmed. So, I finally decided to give myself the day off. I would not do anything that I really didn't want to do.

I did not turn on my computer. I did not do any job-related work. I did not clean the house. I did make myself a pot of soup to freeze for lunches this week, because it didn't take long and I knew it would make today easier for me. I did change the sheets on the bed, because I knew I'd be happier going to bed last night with clean sheets. By late afternoon I was starting to feel a bit better and I did a workout, because I wanted to do it. I did a sculpting DVD, then I got on the treadmill. I only intended to walk for 30 minutes or so, but once I got going I started feeling good and I was enjoying the CD in my stereo, so I ended up doing an hour walk. At that point I decided I should stop, or I might be sorry later.

Was in bed by 11 last night and had a good sleep. Woke up at 9 am this morning (well, after a repeat of the usual morning routing with the cats). My house is still a mess, I still feel like I'm behind on some work, but I feel a million times better than I did at this time yesterday.

This seems to be a lesson that I have to relearn every now and then - sometimes you just have to cut yourself some slack.