Working for the Weekend

I am *so* in need of a weekend.

I forgot how exhausting it is to be constantly developing creative output and constantly doing research -- and this week I've done both pretty much nonstop: analyzed tens of thousands of lines of data going back three years, in order to build out three new projects and a training plan.  Only one is final while the other three are still in the works, but all have serious promise. This is fantastic -- it truly is.

But at the same time, having built a life that includes time to breathe and step back from constant-work-mode, I now recognize stress and anxiety before they get to the overwhelm-and-cause-a-near-nervous-breakdown-only-solved-by-sleeping-for-three-days point. Stress and anxiety and insane amounts of busy-ness? Aren't terribly fun. I'm afraid that I've been a bit of a frenetic grumpy-puss this week; I've certainly been less cheerful than usual, and don't much like that trend.

At the same time, this is Choose You week -- I made a pledge to take good care of myself in some pretty specific ways, and that means paying attention when things run out of balance like they are right now. I'm feeling very compelled to work all weekend, to clear the backlog of questions and ideas and new reading material off of my desk and out of my inbox, but I'm not going to. Nothing that's in the "pending" pile is urgent, nothing that I don't get to tomorrow will be injured or damaged or neglected by waiting until Monday. But it's still going to be hard to leave it, to not think about it all.

One of my colleagues, the charming and snarky-sweet Gabrielle, thinks that I should learn to meditate. I think she might be right, but there are only so many new things I can handle all at once -- curling my ankles up onto my thighs and chanting, "om," for ten minutes every morning will have to wait.