So, remember when I said I was going to work on being more balanced in 2018? Take breaks? Not push myself too hard?

Yeah, I completely failed at that yesterday. I had a lot of physical things to do, and I just went ahead and worked. And worked some more. And then, you guessed it, worked some more.

Part of the problem was that it didn’t even occur to me that I was pushing myself. It didn’t necessarily feel like pushing, not until the last 30 minutes or so. At which point, I was like, well, I’ll be finished soon. And I kept pushing.

I paid for that last night as well as today. I’m just sore and tired. It’s been a few weeks since I spent most of a day doing physical stuff like that.

Today, I’ve taken it easy, in part, because I’ve had to take it easy. Tomorrow, when I get back to doing physical stuff again, I need to remember to take breaks. I might actually start scheduling them in my phone or something.

I’ve spent time looking at why I push so hard. A lot of it has to do with my family of origin and a father who only took lunch breaks and also only quit when either the task was done or it was dinner time. The next big portion has to do with the fact that I was so sick for so long, if I didn’t push through I’d never get anything done. And some of it is that I still don’t trust my health–I still have the fear that tomorrow or next week I’m going to get sick again and I won’t be able to work at all. Plus, I am getting older. I can feel that. I can’t recover as quickly as I used to. I resent having to take breaks.

However. I also remember how amazed I was when I first started using timers on my computers. Instead of working for hours and hours, I started taking regular breaks. And I quickly discovered that I could actually work better, and for more hours total, if I took regular breaks. I still call the software that forces me to stop every hour my productivity software.

I need to figure out how to take breaks and rest and still feel as though I’m accomplishing more when I’m doing all the physical work.

Yesterday was a failure at that. But I’m getting back on that horse and will work at it again tomorrow.