It always feels a little paradoxical to me that I have to put so much effort into my attempts to rest and recover. This weekend, as I prepare for four days away from work, I’ve planned out the cleaning I will do, the groceries I will need, what activities I’ll have each day of my break, what errands I’ll run and when, and what treats I will allow myself as I invariably don’t want the food that’s in my apartment. I have pretty much everything planned out other than what time I’ll go to bed. Frankly, it was way more work to prepare for this weekend than I expected and I’m genuinely a little worried that I’m not going to get as much out of this weekend as I’d like. After all, I’m more burned out than ever, I’ve started getting bad lower back pains every time I sleep for more four or five hours at a time, and my entire body hurts despite doing what I’m supposed to do to counteract the two medications I’m taking that cause body and, somehow additionally, joint pain. It’s exhausting and I’m not sure taking a weekend to rest will actually do anything but leave me feeling like I’ve wasted a bunch of time doing nothing or like I’ve somehow gained nothing for the time I’ve spent. The latter of which might happen regardless, given my record for disasters striking post-vacation [here I am, editing this post on my second post-vacation day at work during what was supposed to be a chill week and disaster has already struck twice…], so it’s difficult to relax.

Despite all of that stuff, I also somehow feel like I’m not stressed enough to actually take the time to rest. I mean, there’s a mixture of the “I don’t deserve to rest” and the “I should save my rests for when I desperately need them” thoughts in there, so I’m pretty sure that’s not a particularly reasonable thing to think, but I can’t help but feel it. It’s like I climbed the stairs to my computer room and found myself sweating, huffing, and puffing as I finally hit the landing on my top floor, despite it being a relatively normal staircase and me being relatively in-shape. It should not be that difficult for someone who is still in their early thirties and who works out as much as I do. Still, because of the medications I’m taking and the exhausting days I often have at work, sometimes climbing a staircase at the end of my day is enough to really drain the life out of me. So why should I take a break if I’m not feeling that mentally, emotionally, or physically drained all the time? I know it’s because I’m in a marathon of a year at work and that it’s better to rest when I can so I don’t need to rest when things get cramped for time, but it’s difficult to really let myself relax when I know what stress is waiting for me on the other side of my rest and knowing that I still have the capacity to work through more stress. Or at least thinking that I have the capacity to do it, anyway. That capacity feels like it’s getting smaller every week as I continue to take those medications that are leaving me feeling drained, achy, and stiff.

Which is where all my preparations come in. Hopefully, I’ll have done enough stuff that I’ll be able to induce relaxation in myself. I’ll get my apartment all cleaned up and while that’s a lot of work all on its own, being able to spend most of my long weekend in a fresh, clean apartment will definitely help. As will spending some time outside of my apartment, at my friends’ house, as we have a grill in (which is like a grill out but inside, using a fancy not-a-grill-but-basically-a-grill thing one of my friends owns) for Memorial Day weekend and hang out [and watch the first episode of the Fallout show, which was better than I expected but also pretty much what I expected]. Hopefully, between those two things and the nice but still fairly healthy foods I bought myself for the weekend (a treat can be healthy-ish! It just needs to be rare), I’m hoping that I’ll have created enough mental separation from my normal life that I can start to let go of some things a bit and unwind once I get through my normal weekend days and STILL don’t have to go back to my usual day job level of grind. It might take until the end of the following week, when I’ve gotten through my three work days without doing any overtime (since it kind defeats the purpose of taking a restful week of only eight-hour days if you wind up doing two ten-hour days and one four or something similar [as I’m editing this day before it goes up, I wound up doing two nine-hour days and that really sorta defeated this purpose, when stacked on top of how stressful and busy work has been since I got back]), but I hope I’ll be able to feel a little more rested or relaxed than usual.

If the preparation doesn’t work, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I’ve already got enough stress just sort of simmering in the back of my mind, thanks to work and the ever-helpful reminder from WordPress that my blog’s domain expires soon. I really need get that figured out, and also figure out what to do my finances for the next couple months since I’ll be making a bit less than usual thanks to my upcoming week of vacation and subsequent week of resting at home because I’m pretty sure I’m going to die in the later half of this year if I don’t recuperate at least somewhat before things get intense from July until November. Sure, I’ll make plenty of money after that, but I’ll be taking a whole pay period off of work and I’m not sure how long it has been since the last time I did that. Or the last time I didn’t have at least SOME overtime on each paycheck… Plus, now I’ve got the new worry of whether my power will go out again or not. It has flickered more times than I’m comfortable with since it came back on two days ago and every time it does, I find myself freezing like a deer in the headlights, waiting to see if it actually goes out or just wants to flicker repeatedly because, somewhere along the line, someone is working on the power (zero of the flickers have happened during subsequent storms, so I have little I can do to rationalize the fear away). I could really do without this latest anxiety and I really hope my power stabilizes or that I can quickly process whatever the source of this brand new anxiety is.