in defense of a mental health day

The last 5 days or so have been whirlwind: first, a couple of days driving to and from Austin in bad weather to deliver a talk, and then hosting my sweet friend Alice for her first real trip to Houston (the weekend involved tons of art with a bit of sightseeing, and it was glorious).

Over the years, I’ve learned that I need to be gentle with myself in transitions, and for that reason I tend to hold Mondays pretty sacred: I do my best to keep from scheduling any appointments on Mondays, so that I can spend them doing administrative tasks and getting my head in the game for the workweek ahead. Because LIME is happening on Saturday (!!) and I know that for the rest of the week I going to really have to put my head down and focus in preparation, I decided that I needed to really take it easy today.

I remembered about 5 years ago, I woke up realizing that I really needed a break, and it suddenly dawned on me that working for myself meant that I could just … do it (It hadn’t occurred to me that I couldn’t!). So I did — after Marcus went to work and I dropped Alex off at school, I came home and got back in bed to watch trashy Netflix movies all day. The solitude and break from thinking about work was exactly what I needed, and I returned to work the next day raring to go. I remember vowing to have mental health days like that every quarter.

Of course, I never did it again.

But today, I decided I was going to do something different: instead of just watching completely escapist movies all day long, I decided to actually spend the day filling my creative bucket up. I read a few books that I’ve been meaning to read. I turned on Netflix, but decided to watch something inspiring, instead of purely entertaining (the episode of My Next Guest Needs No Introduction featuring Melinda Gates did the trick). I journaled, and I did some minor administrative work, and generally took it easy. It’s been great, and suspect that tomorrow I’ll be raring to go.

I don’t know that I need to do this every quarter like I thought I would several years ago, but I think I’ve come to the belief that everyone should have an occasional mental health day — and do it with intention. In other words, more than simply taking a day off, a mental health day should take into account what you and your body actually need, whether it’s rest, or refueling, or inspiration or simply to breath. This article on when and how to take a mental health day struck me as especially wise —I strongly recommend taking a look at it, and then planning your mindful break.

So here’s to taking care of ourselves, friends, however that needs to happen.

(For NaBloPoMo 2019. This is day 11.)

---

---