...That It's Good to Play Hooky Every Now and Then.

Yesterday.


I’ve been working ridiculous hours lately (three weeks in a row where the earliest I punched the "out" card was 11pm … and a week in the middle of that where the earliest was 3am - including one all-nighter), and the only time off I've had was a weekend jaunt to the East Coast to chase my niece and nephew around for three days. Fun, but scarcely relaxing or restorative.


I am, in a word, pooped. And I mentioned the can't-catch-my-breath-and-alarmingly-fast-beating-heart thing. I just ain't feelin' right.


So I decided that I needed a day to chill. And not like a weekend day, where ostensibly most of the rest of the country is also chilling. I mean like a bonus day, an unplanned, cracker-jack-surprise, take-care-of-myself day, with no other objective than to rest and rejuvenate. To sleep in, if my humming body will let me -- and to flop around in bed or on my couch and doze in fits and starts if won't. To maybe even go for a walk or a bike ride that doesn't feel like an item on my to-do list.


I feel guilty about this. I have a sneaking suspicion my boss is less than pleased with me. He's a workaholic, and has grown accustomed to my own workaholic ethic. I've been trying to set boundaries, which he says he respects, but there's something in the way he "jokes" about "missing our 9pm confabs" that makes me feel like my leaving after putting in an eight- or nine-hour day is somehow cutting out early -- like he's legitimately disappointed in me. And I have an aversion to disappointment like vampires do to sunlight -- I generally try to avoid it at all costs, even if it sometimes means I end up plowing headlong into some other destructive pattern.

On the plus side, I did it anyway. Lord knows I have the PTO. And you know what? It was totally worth it.

It wasn't exactly the day I'd planned -- I was picturing sunshine and lazy hours at the park with my Kindle and a good long bike ride on Bessie 2 -- but it was still exactly what I needed. I slept in til noon (sweet blessed sleep), practiced some deep meditative breathing ("practiced" being the operative word), got a pedi (french!), pit-stopped by the lab for a d-dimer blood test (my doc wants to rule out a blood clot as the cause of my breathing issues), and met a couple of  my favorite people for an impromptu dinner at our favorite pho place (oh, pho -- how I've missed you). Not even the rain could keep me down.

The best part? I didn't think about work once. Ok, wait -- that's not true. I thought about work exactly once. I'm running a virtual training tomorrow and needed to check in with the presenters. But after I did, I didn't think about work again.

Happy. :o)