R&R

To my mind, a good week contains:

• A day when I don’t speak to anyone.
• A day when I don’t take the tube.
• A day when I don’t touch a computer.

The first two are easy, a day working from home will cover them (something that I have felt increasingly necessary for my mental well-being).

The last one is hardest. It’s the only way I know to take a real day off, and I am so bad at it. But ultimately, the goal is not 7 meh days, it’s 4 GREAT days of productivity. Maybe 6 meh days is how you start. I can’t be sure, but I know the cycle of “being productive” 7 days a week and never feeling at the top of my game is not the way.

A real day off requires two things: organisation, and will power.

Organisation because everything has to be done by bed-time, the night before.

Will-power, because whatever I realise I have forgotten has to wait 36 hours (max!) until it’s all over.

I took a real day off yesterday for the first time in… frankly, I don’t remember. I had some grand plans – a Cate-time double bill at the gym! Kew Gardens. In the end, I did neither. I curled up on my sofa and watched a lot of Drop Dead Diva (Amazon), got one (reasonable) workout in, and went for dinner with a friend.

And of course I remembered things I had forgotten. But you know what? It was OK. And I feel so much better.