Have you heard about the post wedding blues? How about the post college blues? And, of course we all know about the mourning period we go through when we loose a loved one.
Books, upon books, websites, self-help guru's, and now even our nosey neighbors, all seem to encourage downtime.
Overall, it's perfectly acceptable to go into hibernation mode after a major life changing event. Self help experts and life coaches encourage a period of time to retreat, recharge, collect your thoughts, and basically take care of you.
This is all new to me. Taking a sabbatical. Having downtime. Being reflective about work, life, me.
We are a country, and let me narrow it down a bit more...Los Angeles in particular...a city inhabited by stressed, overworked, and non-stop-do-everything folks.
Why sleep when I have THINGS TO DO? That was the question I answered every day as I filled my agenda, minute-by-minute, with a million-and-one must-do's.
Go. Go. Go. Don't stop. Don't think. Just do.
The more booked my agenda got, the more I felt that I was truly living a good life. But I didn't have a minute, not a one, to think. Alone.
So what happened to my very American way of doing things...you know, work until steam runs out?
Well, I think it finally hit us. Hit. every. single. one. of us.
It hit me.
My surgery last year forced me to take time off and to spend time alone. To think.
Do you have any idea how scary it is to be alone with just your thoughts to keep you entertained? Very.
Right after surgery I quit PR, started school, worked on a conference, and still kept going. I mistakingly thought that I slowed down...I mean, really, after working 15 hour days for 15 years straight, to then going to school and moving away from PR, DID seem like a major slow dow.
But it wasn't. It was just another way to stay busy.
Once school was out, we took a vacation, and when we got back home it hit me: For the first time since the age of 17, I am not working full time.
I am not going to school.
I am home.
No one is forcing me to do anything.
I have a blank slate and a clear road to do whatever I want to do...and it's scary.
Very.
But it's also exciting.
Very.
Onwards and upwards...
Here goes nothing...
