The self-care guilt

Guys, it's so real. 

Last Friday, I took a day off from work. Went to the beach, ate some yummy seafood (raw oysters, anyone?) and just took the day for myself. But when I was gone for the day, I found myself intermittently thinking about work. Did I forget to do anything? (turns out I did, just a small thing). Are my clients ok? Come to realize that I started this job in mid March, and a week later all the covid crazy happened. Hadn't taken a single day off. I could feel that it was needed, and I realized I had to. HAD to. Since working 5 days a week it's also been harder to obtain outside world appointments. As of recently, I've been having some lower back problems (that's another story for another day) and my chiropractor has been doing weekly visits with me since the beginning of this month. I had my last appointment last Tuesday and took a longer lunch to do it. Turns out my appointment ran behind and I ended up off the clock for over an hour! It completely threw off my entire afternoon, so I on a whim cancelled my appointment that was going to be tomorrow, citing I have "too much work to do." I do have a lot of work to do, but I didn't want to have to rearrange my entire schedule again when it was just easier to cancel and rebook it for later.  I was in my boss's office sort of grumbling how difficult it was to get appointments for the outside world. I then said I cancelled my chiro appt because of the difficulties from last week. 

My boss actually reprimanded me for cancelling it and insisted I reschedule it. "We'll work out your schedule. You need to take care of yourself, too." 

So I did. And I made some tweaks to my schedule and got an appt for Thursday. I'm SO used to begging, borrowing and stealing someone else's time to make an appt. Bargaining. "Hey so and so, I have this appointment I CANNOT miss. Can you cover for me? I'll swap a day with you." "Hey boss, gotta make this appointment. Any chance I can take the day off? Oh, we'll be short staffed? Ok that's all right. I'll reschedule it." Fortunately, I haven't had to split many hairs, but today's interaction I found so...easy. And when your boss tells you to do something, you better do it! 

Sometimes we are our own worse patients. I promote self care to my clients every single day, but I often put my own needs and wants on the back burner. Hence I go 3 months without taking a day off (more days off are planned!). And lo and behold, the office didn't explode in my one day of absence!