taking back control

I had a crappy day today. Probably worthy of a FFS Friday post.

I moped around a lot while the following conversation played itself out in my head.

Me: Everything sucks. I’ve been on leave for more than two weeks and I haven’t done anything I wanted to do.

Other me: What do you mean, “wanted to do”? You’re on leave. You don’t have to do anything.

Me: Yes I do. I had this list of things I wanted to get done when I was on leave. I wanted to sort out my meal planning and find out more about the food I want to be eating. I wanted to sit down and work out some goals and things I want to be doing. I was supposed to rest, relax, recover, reassess and refocus.
I wanted to do yoga every day, do some relaxation, draw stuff, write stuff, sort out my baby photos and make an album, work on Juniordwarf’s DVDs, catch up on some scrapbooking, sort out my filing system, clear out some clutter, get my first veggie bed going, make a herb garden, weed the front yard . . .

Other me: Hold on there. When were you going to do all of this?

Me: Well I have four weeks leave. That’s a whole month. So I was going to do house and garden stuff on Tuesdays, photos and scrapbooking on Wednesdays . . .

Other me: Did you think about this?

Me: Of course I did. I have heaps of time.

Other me: Really? Every night is normal. You have all the things you do at nights to do then. Weekends are the same. Mondays you’re in town. There’s been a public holiday and a student-free day in there. The time you have free is the time you would have been at work. The rest of your time is already taken up. So no, you don’t actually have four entire weeks to do whatever you want. How many hours do you work?

Me: 5 or 6 hours a day.

Other me: Then that’s the time you have to do this huge list of things. Plus a couple of hours you aren’t travelling.  So maybe 7 or 8 hours a day if you don’t do anything else.

Me: That’s heaps of time to do stuff.

Other me: And what happened on the days you tried to work on 5 different things?

Me: Um, everything was really rushed and I felt really stressed and I ran out of time to do everything and dinner was late and I went to bed really late and was exhausted the next day.

Other me: What did you tell yourself when that happened?

Me: Schedule Less. Allow More Time.
But I haven’t done anything and I feel really stressed and overwhelmed and I’m supposed to be relaxing and resting and taking it easy and sorting myself out.

Other me: So why aren’t you?

Me: I don’t know. All those things, they’re all part of it, and I need to do them now because it’s not like I can take a month off whenever I want, so I have to make the most of this time. But I’m just wasting time. I feel just as overwhelmed as I did when I was at work

Other me: So you’re going to go back to work just as stressed as when you left?

Me: Um. Oh. I see.
I don’t know what to do.

Other me: Well what’s the point of taking leave?

Me: To take care of myself.

Other me: Is overwhelming yourself taking care of yourself?

Me: No.

Other me: Then I want you to put the list away.

Me: But . . .

Other me: And I want you to think of one thing you will do tomorrow for yourself. Just one. And I want you to do that thing. Can you do that?

Me: Yes, I think I can.

Other me: Will you do that?

(to be continued)