- How are you?
- I'm fine.
- By 'I'm fine' do you mean you really want to just run away and not be you for awhile?
- Yeah.
- Well... I'm fine, too.
I think one of the reasons why this particular TV conversation stuck with me is I so very often respond with "I'm fine" when someone asks how I'm doing. I have also realized that when I respond with "I'm fine" more often than not what I really wish I could say is I just want to run away and not be me for awhile. I know that in the vast scheme of things I really don't have it that bad and that things could be a lot worse (and no, I don't want that to happen!) but I have some things going on right now that seem pretty overwhelming.
I know that when I start to feel this way I need to do a better job at prioritizing so things don't feel so overwhelming. I especially need to learn how to better prioritize when it come to work (I also need to do a better job at delegating). It's pretty sad to realize that I've been back from my vacation for two weeks and it already feels (to me) as if my vacation either didn't happen or that it was months ago. That realization hit me today because I was trying to figure out how long ago my vacation was and it hit me that I said goodbye to my family two weeks ago and that's it. I guess I didn't take my Mom's vacation advice...
A few vacations ago, my Mom told me that I shouldn't throw myself so much into work/life after my vacation that it felt as if I didn't have a vacation at all. After this vacation, I didn't do that... I went full speed back to work (and have worked some VERY long days unfortunately) and unless I say 'no,' I think that's going to continue. Over the past several months I have been in a different role at work so I haven't yet found that balance between acknowledging what I need to do in a given day/week and what I can actually accomplish. I need to learn how to be okay with the fact that work can wait until the following day and not bring the stress home at the end of the day. I'm not sure how I'm going to do that yet but I'm going to find a way to not bring that stress home anymore.
One of the things that brought this realization on was this past week I did not feel well at all. My symptoms were varied so I don't know if I had actually come down with something or if it could be attributed to stress. Because I didn't feel well, I didn't sleep well, so that added to the feelings of spiraling out of control. I even got to the point one day where I sent my brother a text asking if he thought it would be unprofessional for me to just hide under my desk for a bit. He and I laughed about it and decided that it probably wouldn't come across too well to my coworkers and that I probably shouldn't hide under my desk even if I wanted to. I opted not to hide under my desk even though part of me really wanted to. I'm hoping that I am over whatever was making me not feel well as I go into this next work week because I already know that I am going to have at least one or two long days (there is a staff meeting one day which will automatically tack two hours onto the end of my work day). At least I have a three day weekend to look forward to next weekend!
Hopefully I can remember this upcoming week the things that I want to work on. I want to remember to prioritize, to leave stress at work, and to keep myself healthy. I will let you know how that goes for me... But on that note, my dear readers, I should probably bring this to a close for the evening. I stayed up WAY too late last night (like 2:30ish AM too late) watching a TV series on Netflix and still had to be up at a decent time this AM to sing in the church choir. That being said, I should probably get some things wrapped up in the hopes that I'll be able to go to bed at a decent time tonight in order to prepare for the work week ahead.
I hope that we can all have the opportunity this week to say "I'm fine" and really mean it (other than saying it in the hopes of running away). Take care my dear readers and I hope you have a great week!
No comments:
Post a Comment