Every Woman Does Too Much

I might know one woman that doesn't do too much, but for the most part, my friends are performers. They run the kids to and fro, maintain the house, hold a job and attempt to work in some time for themselves. I'm not talking about time on the treadmill either. I'm talking about some quality down time for themselves. 

I have had a very tough time with quality time lately and have only been managing to get the last 5 minutes that my eyes are open. I delude myself into thinking that I'll climb the steps and actually have energy to get through more than a paragraph of the current book I'm reading.... or that I'll catch my journal up with all the things that still need to be chronicled. Yeah, reality creeps in when I wake up because the book has hit the floor or my head falls forward and wake up with the pen in my hand.

Living this way causes problems for me. I end up doing nothing for myself and begin sleepwalking through the moments. I don't like it when my daughter gets frustrated because I'm hearing words come out of her mouth, but I'm not listening... or I accidentally almost kill our rabbit by moving the couch, not knowing that the little furball has crawled under it (that's the Reader's Digest version). That latter incident woke me up this past week. I was literally shaking for two hours after discovering the confused, but thankfully unharmed bunny. I had to take a time out and come back to the world because I wasn't feeling part of it. I only felt it swirling around me, and it sucked. So I unplugged from just about everything. It did help. But I'm going to do it again this weekend because those few days weren't enough. When you've been ignoring your own needs for a long time, three or four days doesn't get you back to the routine of taking time out for yourself. You have to practice a few times for it to become ingrained. I figure I'm worth it.