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Out of balance

By jane on April 8, 2008.

I've found myself repeating an unhealthy pattern lately.

I have what feels like an overwhelming amount of work to do. So I stay up (way too) late to make progress on some of it. I repeat this for a few days, until I either (a) get sick or (b) become so exhausted that I'm barely functional. At which point I take an entire evening off to (a) lay on the couch and/or (b) go to bed at an insanely early hour. Which means that I then get "behind", because I took an evening off....and the cycle repeats.

At least I've finally recognized this and am trying to break out of it, before it really takes a toll on my mental and physical health.

What unhealthy patterns are putting you out of balance lately?

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work-life balance

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I have no suggestions, only sympathy and empathy. I was in a situation like that and it did take its toll... I ended up having to go part-time.

I do sort of the same thing, but the crash isn't quite as intense as yours. I find that I can go indefinitely on 6 hours of sleep per night. I usually push that down to 3-5 when I'm busy, resulting in a day where I go to bed early and sleep in until noon.

Sleep 'til noon!? Sleeping until 7:30 is considered a luxury these days. :)

I think (hope?) the work load will become a bit less overwhelming over the next week, so I'm hoping that will help a bit. We'll see.

Hey Jane,

If you don't mind me asking...what are your weekends like? I think not being able to catch up on weekends has been a huge post-Minnow adjustment for me, but now the weekends are valuable mommy, wise, and housekeeper time and I'm lucky if I get a few hours of work in.

Great question, ScienceWoman! I do feel like I can't count on weekends anymore for catching up, but the good news (?) in that is that I also don't feel "obligated" to work, say, all day Sunday (or feel guilty about not working all day Sunday), because I know that there just isn't time.

I've always taken Saturdays completely off, unless I have a huge deadline that I have to meet. So Saturday tends to be our errand, cleaning (what little cleaning we do---we "speed clean" while Baby Jane takes her AM nap), hanging-out, fun day. I usually work for a few hours on Sunday morning while Mr. Jane spends some quality time with Baby Jane, maybe get a bit more work (or cleaning) in during the afternoon nap and a bit more after she goes to bed. Sometimes on Sundays I get out to see some friends---this happens maybe every other week on average. Oh, and Sunday is laundry day too, so I'm often doing that while multitasking with the other stuff. (Hmm, I'm beginning to see why I'm so tired on Mondays.)

This is why there is, every year, the big countdown to the end of the semester for me. Especially in the spring, I can see the end so clearly I can almost taste it...