When do you just call it a day?
Some days I wake up with the ghost of a migraine teasing at my temples and my neck. I can’t tell if it’s going to settle in or if I am in the clear, and, knowing how out of it I can get when I take my triptans, I am hesitant to take any drugs to treat it until I know for sure it’s here to stay. I stay blah all day: sometimes, with chronic illness(es), you have days where your energy level is low even if you don’t have a full-blown migraine attack or, in my case, an arthritis flare. I call these “the in-between days” or “migraine limbo land,” when I’m not at 100% but not suffering from a significant migraine attack either.
My usual routine on days like this is to fool around the house and on the internet, opening but not responding to work emails as I try to figure out if I need to take the day off.
At least once a month or so, this kind of day spirals out of control in terms of my productivity (or lack thereof). I’ll while away the hours trying to decide if I am going to have a day off or not. In the meantime, I am not exactly resting or taking it easy. I am refreshing my Facebook page, looking through my news feed as if anything important is going to pop up since the last time I checked it. I’ll do the same thing with my email, except I am not up to actually responding to any emails, so what’s the benefit of reading the notes now instead of waiting ’til I feel better?
When I’m in this state of mind, I feel bad just taking the day off straight out. I waste time on the internet because picking up a novel to read seems too decadent an activity for a weekday morning. I will putter around the house doing nothing productive because lying on the couch watching a movie seems like a waste of time.
The thing is, I am already wholly unproductive when I feel this way. In the mid- to late afternoon, I look at the clock and realize I’ve gotten nothing done. I still feel stuck in migraine limbo land, not experiencing a full-blown migraine but still feeling worn down and tired and on the cusp of a “real” episode. I haven’t given my body the rest it needs, the rest that probably would have left me feeling more refreshed (and possibly migraine-free) if I’d just given in to the idea of having a day off when I first woke up and realized this day was likely to be a wash.
This question is particularly aimed to those of you who work from home and/or run your own businesses and/or have a lot of freedom with your work schedules. Do you ever have days like this? Do you ever wake up feeling not up to par but continue to do un-relaxing, unproductive things until the day is gone and you realized you’ve neither worked nor relaxed?
Join the conversation