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Day 405 of 1827: Learning About Self-Care

Day 405 of 1827: Learning About Self-Care

And so I come to the end of an experiment to see how long I can completely neglect my self-care before I have a complete mental breakdown.

As it happens, my limit is 3 months.  Good to know.

Oh, alright; that’s totally an ex post facto justification.  I didn’t deliberately set out to test my limits; I was just so excited to be in control of my income again that I threw myself into my work with reckless abandon.

And it almost destroyed me.

For the last 3 months, I’ve been working 6-7 days each week, and each workday has been pretty intense.  My clients hire me to do the hard stuff, and they definitely get their money’s worth!

To be fair, though, there have been some significant benefits.

The work has been incredibly stimulating, I earned a lot of money (even relative to how much I was making in my country of origin), and I’m going to have some excellent portfolio pieces to build my reputation and advance in my new career.

But I think the cost is becoming a bit too much to bear.

I haven’t been taking time for myself and my relationships, and it really has been affecting me.  For the last month or so, I’ve been suffering from insomnia, depression and anxiety.  I’ve been working myself so hard that I feel utterly exhausted pretty much all of the time.  I can’t focus, and I’ve started noticing that I’m dissociating more often, and I haven’t been making time for my friends.

Even my work was starting to get affected.  The last couple of weeks, I had to cut several workdays short because I simply couldn’t think anymore.

Needless to say, once I couldn’t even maintain my workload – the whole motivation for sacrificing my self-care in the first place – well, there wasn’t much point in continuing.

On the whole, I am glad that this happened.  It has really driven home for me the importance of self-care.

Plus, it is good to know what my limits are.  When I start my next business, there’s going to be a period where I’m going to have to work like crazy to get it off the ground — I’ll have to make sure that I never go longer than a couple of months without taking a break!

In the meantime, I’ve made a bunch of changes to restore balance back into my life:

  • I dropped a client and reduced my total workload to a little over 30 hours per week, and no more than 5 workdays per week.
  • I signed up for a live course on self-care (offered by my friend Hannah).
  • I set a weekly entertainment budget for myself — a minimum, not a maximum!
It’s been a little over a week since I made these changes, and I’ve already started noticing my mental state improving.  I’ve been feeling more excited to get out and see the city, and I even managed to have a few more adventures.
In a few hours, I’m flying to Mexico where I’ll be hanging out for the next 2-3 months.  With a newly-lightened workload, in the company of some awesome friends, and with a newfound focus on taking care of myself, I think the remaining part of 2013 is going to be a very meaningful time for me.

quiet neighborhood in Barranco
This neighborhood has spectacular views.
Check out more photos of Barranco on FYA’s Facebook page!
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