Yesterday was one of those days where my body
and mind rebelled against my agenda. I woke up with great plans to edit another
fifty pages of my novel, clean, work out, and perform a litany of other mundane
tasks, and I ended up spending all day lying on the couch alternately napping,
crying, and staring at my Kindle. Part of it was genuine illness; I’ve had
sinus issues for weeks now and I think I finally came close to getting a
full-fledged cold, but part of it was mental fatigue, too. My body and brain
needed rest. My spirit needed to grieve. At the same time, I had to fight off a
fair bit of guilt for just allowing myself to collapse, since the concept of a
day of rest seems to have completely gone out the window in this culture, along
with the concept of listening to your body and honoring its needs. This happens
to me over and over again when I’m in “push myself” mode for too long, but I
never seem to learn. Part of the problem is that until I collapse, I don’t even
realize how hard and fast I’ve been going. I’ve never had adequate commitment
to self-care, but I realized yesterday I need to put a decent practice in
place, and soon. I’m one of those people for whom life is difficult and
bewildering even under benign circumstances, and almost unbearable when it gets
stressful. I find Yoga aggravating and meditation tedious, so I’ll need to come
up with an alternative. Primal screaming, maybe?
One good thing about crashing out with a Kindle
for a day is new books! I love the “Try a Sample” feature on the Kindle Fire,
because it gives you a generous sample of each book. I was looking for
something funny to ready yesterday because I was so emotionally spent, and I
discovered that lots and lots of comedians have written books. One of those is
Jen Kirkman, whose book I bought after trying samples of six or seven other
comedian-penned books that just didn’t grab me. Jen reminds me a lot of myself,
and her book, “I Can Barely Take Care of Myself”, is hilarious. I haven’t finished
it yet, but I’ll review it here when I’m done.
I’m still not feeling fully up to snuff (I don’t
know what that phrase means, but I’m using it anyway), so this week’s post is
shall be cut short. Here’s a video to amuse you in my stead:
--Kristen McHenry
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