Y’all know I am pretty good at full disclosure. However, I am gawd-awful at taking time off. Seriously, it’s problematic. Everyone says so. To give you a hint, I have been published 14 times over 12 years. My peers think I’m nuts.
My publisher adores me.
The first few months of 2025 have been cray-cray busy. I’ve been going full tilt this entire time. Last week, I decided to take 3 days off.
Three. Whole. Days.
I failed at that, but I did actually take off one day… Monday, April 7th. Now let me explain to you what “actually taking a day off” means to me.
It means I didn’t work the entire day and I didn’t feel guilty about it. I didn’t even think about work. I didn’t check email. I ignored my texts. I only did what I wanted to do.
What did I want to do? Well. I got up and had breakfast. I had made a list of antique stores I wanted to go haunt. I made a reservation at one of my favorite restaurants and took a book to read. I played with my dogs. And while all of that was fun and peaceful and happy, the best part of it was actually allowing myself to unplug from work. To literally let myself just enjoy the day without ever letting myself think “I really should be writing/filming/planning <fill in the blank here.>”
It was fabulous. Amazing even! It felt so free. And then true to form, I relapsed and worked Tuesday and part of Wednesday.
But the main point was that I showed myself “I can do this if I just make it important enough.” By the end of Monday, I was thinking:
“Why can’t every day be like April 7th?”
And of course, not every day can be. But in my case, a lot more days should be. Days to just be happy. To be free. To nurture my soul and my heart and my body.