As a husband, father, dentist and dental geek, photographer, blogger, passionate learner, etc. it often seems that there is never enough time in the day, week, month, or year to get even remotely close to getting everything done. Add in my ADD that pulls me in a dozen directions at once, and it seems that I never stop. Oh yeah…..and we’re in the middle of the holidays from Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Years (and any other holidays in there you may celebrate 🙂 ). Can you relate? Ever feel like you can never catch up, catch your breath, or take a break despite mental and physical exhaustion?
I mean, as much as I like to imagine that my life is like the picture on the left, far more often the squirrel pulls me in a gazillion directions at once, and I end up like the image on the right. Who’s with me?
Give Yourself Permission to Do Nothing and Enjoy It!
At least, that’s what I did this past weekend, and man, did it feel good. After working incredibly hard this year on many different projects, I hit the proverbial wall the week after Thanksgiving. Worn out mentally, emotionally, and physically. You know you’ve felt the same way, right? And the worst part is – if you try to take some time to yourself, you start feeling guilty for not doing all of the things you “know” you just have to be doing! The idea of just dropping everything and saying “NO MORE!” is so difficult these days, don’t you think? If you’re not prepping the house for holidays because everyone on your street is doing it, or planning the family travels and meals, or working overtime to earn the extra money to pay for all the gifts you’re “supposed” to buy, making sure you’ve shared all the holiday photos to everyone in the family from the get-togethers, you feel bad taking a breather, don’t you? And when that happens, the breather doesn’t even really feel like it was much of a breather, does it?
I’ve recently started regular meditation at home as a way to settle my mind and impatience and remember that just “being busy” isn’t what life is about. But you know, even meditation had started feeling like just one more thing I had to do to deal with all the things I had to do. So even the meditation wasn’t feeling good, if it was something to deal with all the other somethings.
So I said (and please pardon my French here, but I am mostly French, so I’ll take the liberty LOL):
SCREW IT ALL, I AIN’T DOING ANYTHING THIS WEEKEND! AND I’M GOING TO ENJOY IT!
So I did!
- No exercising
- No meditation except 20 minutes that I really felt like it
- Lay around on the sofa a lot, plus took several naps
- A loooooooooong hot shower
- Only a little house-cleaning with my wife
- A little Christmas decorating of the house, but not really until Sunday evening when I was getting tired of doing nothing
- No dental reading, no blogging or social media for work, not even much personal
- No cooking, just ate leftovers with the family in the family room
- Talked with my wife
- Slept late, went to bed early, took several naps
- Read an old favorite book that required no thought
- And best of all, every time I started feeling a little guilty about being such a total slacker, I reminded myself that this was EXACTLY what I wanted to do, and I was enjoying the heck out of it!
And by Sunday evening, I felt so much better, it was amazing! I was actually looking forward to work again on Monday, and on Monday, I was ready to roll.
In closing, I will leave you with some profound wisdom for the ages:
#YOLO doesn’t mean you have to be doing something every second of every day to avoid wasting precious minutes.
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Take some time out to not even bother smelling the roses if you don’t feel like it.
#amirite?
