Today ended my no workout streak, and it was time.  Twelve days of no workouts was about five too many.  Work and my other commitments have been so busy lately that I haven’t had much chance to do anything.  And though I appreciated the workout break for a bit, I started to crave exercise.  I got cranky, actually.  I’m not a lot of fun to be around when I feel unexercised and overwhelmed.  Right now, I feel a lot of both.

So can someone make it stop?  I can.  I can’t make work stop – nor do I want to, unless you know a sweet sugar daddy who needs some love.  But I can make decisions about my non-work time that will make my life easier.  I can decide to free up my nights – to cancel things, even good things, in the interest of taking pressure off myself.  So that’s what I’m doing.  I’m giving myself a break because I can and because I need to.

Yesterday, I had a coaching session with a life organizer who challenged me to take action to help myself before I hit crisis mode.  In other words, for many of us, it takes illness or loss or the equivalent to force us to prioritize.  Why wait for that?  Why not reprioritize before something dramatic happens?  Right now, my mental health is at risk.  Rather than allow my mental health to collapse or risk making myself physically ill by pushing hard all the time, I’m going to scale back.  She gave me two tasks.  The first is to clear five nights between yesterday and the end of the month.  The second is to take one of those nights and call someone after work to do something totally spontaneous with me.  I’m up to both tasks.  Frankly, I’m even a little excited about them.  Scaling back?  What a concept.