Newsletter subscribers will remember that last week, I was sick! Well, I’m a bit better, but still under the weather. For me, having a week-long sore throat/stuffy nose/cough/sinus headache is crazy. In the past, I’d recover from most colds in two or three days, and be right back to over-performing. But, this time it’s covid. 🙁

Yep! Covid finally caught up with our household. And while my boyfriend was hit hard for a few days and now is mostly recovered, I’m still trudging along feeling about 60% of normal.

And part of the reason why, I think, is that I’m really bad at taking a break.

I know exactly what a person should do to take a break: get comfy. Nap. Or, if sleeping is unlikely, read. Watch a show. Play video games. Eat and drink things that are good for you.

And I know what not to do: work. Strenuous activity. See people (in the case of covid!).

However . . .

I like to be efficient. As a new author, essentially self-employed and working from home, that means I do a lot of reading “comp” titles at night, plotting out new mysteries while exercising, and creating my characters in video games to resemble the characters in my books then using those details to add to stories later or work out plot holes. Even my down time is productive. And most of the time it’s a fun kind of productive, so I don’t mean to complain–what I want to point out is that all of the things I should be doing to rest are things that I also expect to add value to my work.

Essentially, I’m never “clocking out.” 😉

So now, here we are, and my boyfriend is up and about and I still get tired at the thought of going for a walk. And I think one of the reasons for that is that even though I *do* the right things to rest, I don’t *mean* them. Mindset, I think, is a much more important part of the picture than I realized.

I’ve had to step back and think about how I’m approaching things. I’ve had to let go of a lot of my underlying expectations and lists of things to think about, while at the same time letting go of lists of things to do. Today I’ve been doing my best to actually focus on the moment, and not on everything I’ve assigned myself–whether it feels like work or not. And today, I really am feeling better. 😀