Discipline, The Cure to Hiatuses

Have you ever been to Wal-Mart on Black Friday? The pushing, the shoving, the overly excited teenagers, and that one insufferable mother pressed up behind you cussing you out over a Playstation 4 controller? That’s what my mind and life felt like prior to my hiatus. It was unorganized, it was overwhelming, it was a lot of outside and self-inflicted pressure, a good amount of comparisons, and a whole lot of “Fuck this shit”. There was no bouncing back, it was more like, stumble to the next task wounded and sometimes defeated. And after my coworker expressed, “Hey Yetti, you alright? You seem like you’ve been running on E for a while,” I had to reflect. And by reflect, I mean sit in the handicapped stall of the women’s bathroom and force myself to  cry it out, and then breathe.

The hiatus was announced shortly after that.

Only for me to have the hardest time actually taking it.

Me: Trying to relax but all I can think about is work!
Best-friend: You better relax! Tomorrow you can freak out and work. Tonight, you chill.
Me: I’ve relaxed since Weds!
Best-friend: Today is Friday. That’s only two days.

If we’re being completely honest, I didn’t “turn off” till last Monday, and I basically shut down. I did the bare minimum to get through work without any angry emails. I didn’t blog. I removed social media from my phone. I crawled into bed after getting home from work and read, watched T.V. and anything else that was not work related. I ran away to my best-friend’s home and had the best weekend ever celebrating her birthday. So in short, I was a regular 20-something year old, just without the added stress of trying to hold it together. It was great.

Sunday evening as I watched old Scandal episodes and spent time with friends, I put together my post schedule for the month without the added pressure of am I doing enough? I created my to-do list for my upcoming event without the fear of failing at this, and I caught up on the emails I had avoided since November without dread or annoyance. It really boils down to discipline. Someone mentioned to me as we both vented on how shitty things had been lately.

You need to have discipline to find a balance between work and play. If you’re anything like me, and you believe you should work hard now, in order to play and make a difference later, then you need the discipline to do as you say: work hard, but remember to play later. Remember to take time to recuperate, to do the things that keep you at ease, reset and then get back to it.

You need to have discipline to set goals and tasks for the day. Nothing is worse that going through your days, running about like a headless chicken. You accomplish less, not to mention it’s extremely hard to pick up where you left off the next day. Plan then execute.

You need to have discipline to SLEEP. I’ve been #teamnosleep for a few years now, I sometimes correct the pattern but I often utilize my insomnia to get work done. Until I read up on the effects of what happens to your mind and body when there is a constant lack of sleep.

And of course, I’m sure I stated this with different words prior to this post, but you need discipline to take care of you. Period. Stick to the plan of being good to you. Make the decision to not run your well-being to the ground. It’s easier to bounce back from a mini planned hiatus, then one that was forced upon you because everything in you gave out.

Take it from me.

Xx