Photo credit: IStockPhoto
It’s been a week since I announced that I am taking a year off* to focus on living my life and getting a book written. Here’s how it’s going so far…
*(Apparently some people are confused what taking a year off means. We’ll get into that later.)
A mixed bag of overwhelm and relief
The first thing I experienced was a combination of relief and overwhelm. Some of this I predicted, some of it came by surprise.
Here is a video update I did on day 3 explaining the pros and cons of making my announcement:
As you can see, I am still a bit tired in this video. But overall I am more relaxed and hopeful about what is yet to come.
And here’s what’s happened since
In my video I mentioned that I ordered a folding table to help manage the massive piles of paper I am trying to catch up on.
This is what it ended up looking like in stages:
Stage 1
Stage 1 of my organizing table/writing space setup.
The final outcome
Clearly, the writing and organizing space is in an unfinished portion of my basement. Not the best atmosphere, but it does have natural light coming through the window behind me and a door I can close. Those totes underneath? Those are my active files. Yeah… it’s pretty absurd how much I cleared out of my bedroom and transferred to my storage/laundry room. The good news is, the space in my bedroom is now open and it’s much more peaceful walking into my room now!
Well, that led to this…
- I took a full inventory of my life: After I got my table and files lined up, I went into my Basecamp program (a project management program I use and love) and revamped my to-do lists. I had over 200 to-do items on it. That’s grotesque now that I think about it.
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I re-evaluated the priorities of each item, deleted stuff that I could let go of (releasing my perfection and changing my expectations) and after a few hours I had a completely new slate to work from. God, that felt good. End result is about 40 items were deleted and 20 new “want to do” items were added. (What a novel concept… adding “want to do’s” instead of ‘have to do’s”!)
- Additionally, I took an inventory of all my loose ends. I cut all my emails down to 59 left to respond to. I put an away message on my email account to let people know it may take awhile for me to respond (or may not get a reply at all). I have a TON of Facebook PM’s to sift through, but that will all have to wait. Those are NOT a priority right now.
- I printed up a call log sheet and documented a full list of return calls I still need to make. Based on my commitments for the next week (a writing workshop, YAY!) I will get to my phone calls two weeks from now.
It was right about that time where I started feeling better control of my world that I started realizing just how MUCH I still had to do. Enter the ever-so-insidious stress. As ‘in control’ as I felt about knowing exactly what was on my plate and how (and in what order) I was going to tackle it …I got OVERWHELMED when I looked at everything in one sitting.
Which brings me to a few days later…
Today as I was moving through all the things I had planned, I felt this horrible headache building up. Then I got woozy. Then I realized, “Oh shit. I think my blood pressure is spiking BIGTIME.” So I went to check and and sure enough, it was. I took it twice just to be sure. The first time it was 165/109. Um, not good. Then I took it again, hoping it would be a fluke. The second time it was 174/97.
Well peeps, that’s my sign. I had to wait until the respiratory therapist was done with our home visit for Dan before I could do much about my situation. Once he was finished with his visit with Dan and was out the door, I told Dan and Drake that I HAD to lay down. This was hard for me because it was about 4pm and that is what I call the witching hour – where it’s too late to take a nap and too early to fix dinner. It’s also the exact time that Dan’s aide leaves for the day. Normally I would keep myself busy with work during that time while Dan occupied himself on his computer, but today I didn’t have much of a choice (let alone the option to work because that’s no longer part of my daily routine!).
God, I hate putting a child (Drake) in charge of his Dad but I didn’t have a choice. I made them swear to wake me if they needed anything. That worry alone was enough to make me want to stay awake and alert to know the moment something goes wrong. I was a bit freaked out because just last week Dan blacked out and fell at 5am and I wasn’t awake the moment it happened. It’s bad enough I don’t get rest, but when I do and something bad happens, I feel even worse for doing something as simple as sleeping.
I resisted sleep for as long and for as many reasons as I could. And that just made my blood pressure go up even more.
I could read a book, but my eyes couldn’t focus. I could watch TV but nothing good was on. I knew that distracting myself to stay awake wasn’t the answer. I had to embrace the mere fact that right now…no matter what time of the day it was and who was in charge in my absence…I HAD to close my eyes and truly rest.
I did take a nap. Honestly, it did throw me off. I did regroup (as a result of my nap and shutting things down, my headache was gone!), so all in all I learned to do something I was not used to doing.
I also learned that the relief I felt earlier this week was short lived, particularly when I do a full inventory of what I still have left ahead of me and get myself so friggin’ worked up that my blood pressure spiked.
This is fucking hard, y’all.
As I finish this post, my headache and blood pressure is back under control. Thankfully.
My next post will be about how I changed my mindset to get it turned back around. I will also share other things I am still struggling with and how I am continually adjusting in this morphing process of revamping my entire life. Until then, I hope that sharing this will give you some insight as to how this is NOT as easy as it appears, and if you decide to take time off you are able to plan ahead for some of these potential pitfalls.
And hopefully soon I can share some of the triumphs of getting past it. 