It was freeing at first. Bad weather, and I didn’t force myself to go out for errands to both tick a task and complete a high number of exercise minutes. Or to do it the next day. The errands weren’t urgent, and I didn’t feel like it. I could go to bed when I was tired, without guilt, regardless of what had been achieved that day.
The attempt to get up later than the usual 5am has not been very fruitful. I did not get up as early, however it has not yet managed to be restful. There was an annoyance with my phone’s sleep focus that I’ve only just now found a way around, and guilt about my cat having to wait a bit more for her breakfast. Also, that pesky internal clock is not enjoying derogating to its habits. It’ll take some time.
I also suddenly felt like I had so much free time in my day! Things are so much more fun when there are no expectations. Inspiration rushed in and I did sit down and draw.
So the first few days were a breeze. A nice little vacation that made me think, “I can do that all month, no problem!”
And then guilt and perfectionism saw the space wide open and invited themselves in.
(Not really, they both know they each have a guest room ready, they just also invaded the living room and the kitchen)
It felt fairly subtle, actually. The urges to create were replaced by wasting time on social media and obsessively playing spider solitaire on my phone. Having YouTube videos of people playing games I know by heart just to have unending, background noise droning on, instead of things that engaged me.
The sudden thought that I could be doing something better – with the underlying meaning of “productive” – with my time popped more and more often in my mind, and the awareness of all the things I knew needed doing made that worse.
Then I started to miss the “productive” day high. Clean kitchen, fridge stocked with prepped food, errands done, tasks checked off. And the guilt of not doing my “best” every day.
I’d shared my lowering of my expectations of myself with some of the people closest to me. Not to force any accountability, because it never crossed my mind that I could need any. But suddenly I was thinking, “I could just start up again like normal and not tell anyone”.
Which is very much a red flag. Why would I need to hide this from anyone? Why even feel the need to hide it?
Rationally, I know that it’s a detoxing of sorts and that a week is not enough to be effective. And very fortunately, though evidently not foolproof, I’ve become quite good at coaching myself out of behaviours that don’t serve me. So, as terribly uncomfortable as it has been, I’m continuing with what I’ve started.
There will be some changes though. While at first it felt like anything was possible, including activities previously part of my dailies, at some point “I don’t have to do it” got some of its wires crossed with “I just won’t do it”. This is a time to do away with guilt, not with doing things. I can get up at 5 if I want to, and take an hour-long walk.
This is going to require listening more intently to myself, but challenge accepted.
Correcting course and carrying on!