on taking care of oneself
Since thursday after the clogic exam until about the start of today I have suffered on and off from a very extreme case of "what do I do with myself." For the first time in a while this semester I've experienced the phenomenon known as "illusory free time": no work due in the immediate future. What always results from this is guaranteed goofing off mixed with strong guilt over not getting on some of the longer-term things I may have to be done. At an extreme, however - namely, when the illusory free time lasts longer than just one afternoon, which was the case this past half-week - it results in waking up depressed and having moments throughout the day filled with a very deep "what do I do with myself" in nearly every level of interpretation of such. This yields a powerful desire for doing something, with complete inability to come up with anything to actually do - very frustrating.
People burn out when they lose their balance. My general approach to doing things (work, activities, etcetera) involves applying a moderate amount of energy over long periods of time, with possible bursts of high energy on things I care about. Normally, though, this is characterized by a majority of my time spent doing work inefficiently, that being interspersed with short bits of goofing off, which serves to keep stress levels and energy expenditure low. What happened this time around, though, was a multiple-day period of -no- energy, lots of guilt, and lots of vague unfulfilled desire to do "something".
What I would like to be able to do is fill that sort of time with a seemingly somewhat difficult strategy: most obviously, it should get used for taking care of long-term projects and various chores, and it also needs some sort of mental health activity, such as going for a walk. Both of these are high-inertia tasks (hard to get started, not as hard to continue), but probably worth trying to do in times like that.
I meant to post the above yesterday, and missed it. Instead you get it today, with
to make up for the miss.
People burn out when they lose their balance. My general approach to doing things (work, activities, etcetera) involves applying a moderate amount of energy over long periods of time, with possible bursts of high energy on things I care about. Normally, though, this is characterized by a majority of my time spent doing work inefficiently, that being interspersed with short bits of goofing off, which serves to keep stress levels and energy expenditure low. What happened this time around, though, was a multiple-day period of -no- energy, lots of guilt, and lots of vague unfulfilled desire to do "something".
What I would like to be able to do is fill that sort of time with a seemingly somewhat difficult strategy: most obviously, it should get used for taking care of long-term projects and various chores, and it also needs some sort of mental health activity, such as going for a walk. Both of these are high-inertia tasks (hard to get started, not as hard to continue), but probably worth trying to do in times like that.
I meant to post the above yesterday, and missed it. Instead you get it today, with
to make up for the miss.