Earlier in January my leap year lesson #8 was Listen to Your Body. I didn’t do that this week out of sheer stubbornness and a crazy long to-do list of things that had to be done. After several nights in a row of 3-4 hours sleep and closing out the last couple of nights with chest pains that had me a little worried, my body got my attention today when I hit a wall unlike any I’ve hit in recent memory.
By noon it was difficult to concentrate. I was physically exhausted and a little queasy. I needed sleep. Big time.
So as soon as my last meeting was over this afternoon I came home about an hour earlier than normal, got comfortable and laid down. I’m nowhere close to refreshed while writing this, but I’ll go to bed for the night very soon after completing this post and will sleep Saturday until my body says to do otherwise.
It is probably a good thing that I read an article a couple of days ago about the fact that you don’t really catch up on sleep by sleeping late one day after days of deprivation. It was a word I needed to hear.
My excellent manager and I talked today about what I can transition to others on my team to lighten my load some. That is desperately needed and will be done. Some planned vacation during March and April will also be very welcome.
For about the past 12 years I have had occasional heart afibs and they almost always occur at the end of a day that was just insane in its activity level. So far that hasn’t happened this week, but by late last night I was actually fearing worse, and today’s body shutdown was alarming to me.
There is still more work that must be finished this weekend, but at least it will be done around times of letting my body sleep when it wants.
Apparently I haven’t really learned lesson #8 referenced above, but I think I can state with certainty what I’ve learned in the last 24 hours with leap year lesson #55 – Hitting a wall is not fun.
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