It’s been a while since I’ve written a personal post for my blog, but my experience last week has inspired me to branch out of my boudoir bubble for a little bit and open the door to my personal thoughts.
I was absolutely down for the count last week. We’re talking 50+ hours in bed, only getting up to use the restroom. Food didn’t enter my body, but I did go through half a tub of electrolyte powder. Shoutout to Re-Lyte by Redmond salt (specifically the Strawberry Lemonade flavor).
Did I have the flu? Did I catch whatever chest cold was going around? Was I dying? These are the thoughts that went through my head as I made no sudden movements, or any movements, from 8pm on Monday through 9am on Friday.
The previous week I had been at Disney for a trip I take annually with a local charity. We spend the week with kids with chronic and terminal illnesses, giving them an all expenses paid trip to Disney world. It is an exhausting week of 4am mornings and 11pm bedtimes, but it is totally worth it to see the smiles on the kids faces and to know that for once they feel “normal” around other kids that share their struggles.
Even though I’ve been participating in this trip for over a decade, somehow THIS year the sickness and exhaustion caught up to me.
Initially I excused my death-bed away as a result of my 30k step days at Magic Kingdom and the lack of vegetables I ate (probably still had something to do with it). However, on day 2.5 of headaches, body aches, and sleeping through the entire day it occurred to me that my body was taking a stance. My body was fed up with me, it was pissed off, it had been screaming at me and I was ignoring it through my noise-cancelling headphones.
My body had had enough and decided to take a stance like a golden retriever that is 100% finished with its walk and will not budge no matter how hard you pull the leash. I realized that I had been running myself into the ground for who knows how long (I’m guessing years?!) without giving myself a proper break to rest.
Things are STRESSFUL right now. Business is stressful, the world is stressful, keeping up with all of the Bravo TV franchises is stressful (kidding), figuring out what to eat for dinner EVERY.SINGLE.NIGHT. is stressful. We are surrounded by stress, but instead of slowing down and taking a beat to rest and process we tend to add more stress to our days by stressing over our stress. How many more times can I say “stress”? Now I’m stressed about repeating myself.
What I learned as I was a non-functioning human last week is that I DO need to make myself a priority. I don’t see myself being able to spend 4 days in bed every month, or even every year… I don’t know many people that would have that luxury ever. I DO see myself being able to spend 2 hours here, 6 hours, there, or maybe even a full day every now and then to REST and make myself a priority.
I’ll take a brain break and read.
I’ll lay in bed and listen to an audiobook.
I’ll watch a few hours of my comfort show or a dumb 2000s rom-com.
I’ll go on a walk and identify plants with my plant identifier app (best pandemic app purchase I made haha).
I’ll SLEEP.
Making myself a priority is a new goal of mine. It seems very dumb to have this as my revelation, but until last week it really had never occurred to me that I needed to force myself to come first.
If I’m healthy then I can participate wholly and excitedly in my life. My relationship will be healthier, my friendships will be more intentional, my analysis-paralysis will subside, my business will have me actively participating and successfully tapping into my creative brain.
Things may still be stressful, but I’ll have the capacity to handle them well because I have made sure that I’m at 100%. I might have to say no to things (my worst nightmare), but I’m looking forward to being able to say YES without consequences.
So, if you can, take a beat and rest. It looks different for everyone and there of course is no perfect solution, but 30min of silence in the carpool lane or 1 hour of wandering through Target can make a world of difference.
Cheers!!
-Sarah