Earning Relaxation
A short entry for the 21st day of my hundred days: I'm taking a sick day today, after a sleepless night of intense stomach pain (most likely because I ate too many almonds, which I did not realize was a thing until I was doubled over in pain at 2am last night). I actually tend to enjoy sick days, because it's a time when I feel like I've earned the right to relax. Most of the time I am so caught up in the things I need to do, or feel like I should be doing, that things that should be relaxing just add to my anxiety. It tends to take being physically incapacitated for me to be able to do things like take a nap, take a bath, or lay around watching TV. So usually I only end up relaxing when either I'm sick or I've exercised so much that I can't move. This isn't a humblebrag about being insanely productive, either. It doesn't necessarily translate to workaholism. Sometimes it helps me get things done, sometimes it renders me unable to do anything. Either way, I don't spend much time feeling calm.
I would like to be able to enjoy these things without having to be actively ill or in pain. It is pretty silly that I feel like I have to earn the right to chill out. But there's a Calvinist burrowed somewhere deep in my brain and I have yet to find him and put him out of his misery. Some deeply American part of me is tangled up in a knot of believing that my productivity is the only measure of my worth. I have to believe there's more to life than that, and I do hope that I can rewire whatever groove in my brain is so caught up in it.
In the meantime, I'll enjoy being sick.
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