Calling it a Day When I Don't Want to Call it a Day

For every day that I’m able to do things, I try to do as much as possible. And as someone who has A LOT going on right now, that can fill up my days!

 

Which means my days can get pretty busy, and while I’m happy to fill up my days with all of that stuff I am doing and to fill in each day on my planner with all the stuff I MANAGED to do, sometimes I just need to STOP and listen to my body.

 

Like I had to do last night.

 

It wasn’t the headaches that made me stop. It wasn’t the sleepiness that made me stop.

 

I had just run out of steam. It was after midnight and I could barely keep my eyes open (even though, currently, I am only able to see out of just one eye!). I had just completed another round of research for one of the articles I am writing this month, and I was ready to conk out.

 

Except that I didn’t want to. Why? I had one line left to fill in for the day in my planner, and I wanted to fill it in!

 

 

 

I know I have said in the past that I have learned to be okay with NOT filling in every single box with a bunch of stuff done in my planner, especially since some of the things I work on can take hours, but I still do try to fill in those boxes if I can. This is because I want to. It makes me fill good knowing that I did ALL of that stuff on that day – even though it doesn’t exactly include Every Single Thing that I did for that day.

 

My planner isn’t so much a record of things I plan to do. I learned long ago that it was just too stressful to make a list of ALL of the things I want to do on those days, and I felt really bad to see those things I wasn’t able to cross off on my list. So I decided that, instead, I would write down all of the things that I managed to do in that day. (I got the idea for this after I noticed that my oldest, Centauri, was doing this very thing. I decided to give it a try and I liked that method better!)

 

Also, I don’t put EVERYTHING I did in my day into my planner. I don’t record my workouts (that goes on another list!), the time I spend reading for pleasure, the time I spend “checking in” on social media, watering and caring for the plants, chores, eating meals, etc. What I record in my planner is what I call the “writing work,” even though it is not just the writing stuff that I do each week! I am also doing work for the publishing company (soon to be two), doing research, working on my newsletter, reviewing books (I am currently reviewing 8 books), book promotion, and, now, learning a new writing trade.

 

And all of that stuff has extra stuff attached to it! Such as creating promo graphics, editing/revising a WIP, exploring something for my research even further (you can never have too many sources!), working on the newsletter archive, spending more time reading one of the books I am reviewing, coming up with new ideas for promoting one of my books and reading scripts!

 

But as for last night? Well, I certainly had some more stuff to do! I could have easily selected something to put into that last line for the day.

 

Because I still have to finish editing a manuscript. As well as formatting ANOTHER manuscript!

 

And I hadn’t yet managed to work on any one of my current articles. And it was a NEW WEEK to get back to the freelancing thing!

 

And I could have worked on one of the short stories that I need to revise!

 

And I could have spent some time learning that new trade.

 

And I also could have updated one of my websites, because that STILL needs to be done!

 

And … and …

 

I could probably go on about all of the things I was thinking of that I could still do in order to fill in that last line. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized something: I was focusing too much on what I didn’t do that day. After I had already done so much!

 

I had to change things up. I had to look at the things that I DID manage to do that day (important things!) and just be satisfied that I got a lot done. And, yes, it was still a lot! And at least I got the important stuff done. There’s that.

 

And I also had to listen to my body. I was sooo tired. There was no way I was going to be able to do anything else – and even if I tried to do anything else, it would probably not be done very well because I was already nodding off while doing that research for my article.

 

No. I had to recognize that my body, and my brain, needed sleep. I had to call it a day even if I didn’t want to. I had to let go of that expectation to do more because my body was telling me, “I need rest!” And I had to listen to that signal.

 

Just as I had adjusted my expectations to accept that I didn’t do a lot of stuff in my day because the things I had done took up several hours and it was getting really late and time to call it a day, I also realized that I have to adjust my expectations that sometimes, I won’t fill in a day’s box on my planner if my body is telling me, “We need sleep!”

 

If it’s sending me that message, I think I should listen to it. Tomorrow is another day for me to make up for what I didn’t get done today!

 

UPDATE: The next day was better.