Yesterday was such an off-day. I didn’t want to start work, I dragged my feet on taking a shower, and when I finally did sit down to work, I had to reward myself practically every time I did anything. I wanted to read, but nothing sounded interesting. I wanted to write on the blog, but I had nothing to say. The highlights of my day were breakfast, lunch, and dinner (and an unexpected evening visit from our friend Caroline). But other than meals, the day felt like crap. I have written before about off-days: on recognizing their inevitability and the role they play in the creative process, on the importance of going through the motions, and on how to turn them to my advantage. So I’m reconciled to their occasional presence in my life, and they no longer derail me entirely. But unfortunately, understanding them does nothing for my mood. Off-days still feel 100% bleh.
The off-day came as a surprise, after several weeks of inspired activity and major insights. Just the night before, I’d been super fired-up about an idea I had for the family history (it has to do with depicting family members), and was also getting really excited about changing up the Open Mic. We’d spent the weekend in San Jose with my family, celebrating the start of the Rabbit Year, and after we got back to the East Bay we went for a walk, made ourselves a tasty dinner, and then watched a movie before bed. Everything was going so smoothly, and then bam! I woke up in the middle of the night and I just felt depressed. I told myself the feeling would lift in the morning, but it didn’t, even after a mile-and-a-half brisk walk over the trails in the most brilliant sunshine. It feels like spring here. Our neighbors’ ornamental cherry trees have blossomed overnight into clouds of pink, and the birds sing like everything. But yesterday it made no difference. I even reread my “I get to be alive” post from last week and it made me smile, but I didn’t feel it in my soul. It’s so strange how our mental chemistry can shift like this.
Today I feel better, but I’m still not all that peppy. I confess I am waiting eagerly for lunch and playing lots of Spider Solitaire between the paragraphs of this post. I think the biggest trouble with off-days is that nothing feels important. I could work on the family history, I could paint, I could write a creative mission statement, but why bother? It all seems so difficult. At least I recognize now that I should still try. Yesterday when I was writing my morning pages, I couldn’t decide whether I should take the day off and play, or put my head down and work. It was a hard decision, because you know I have been trying to take better care of myself, and an artist date sounded very much like good self-care. But I just had a feeling that if I took the day off, it really would be self-indulgent and not what I needed. So I made myself work as much as I could, but took care of my body along the way — and I do think it was the right choice, because today I still have productive momentum and am feeling grateful for the foundation work I did yesterday. (And we are taking a proper weeknight getaway later this week, so fear not, my adventure-seeking self is not deprived!) I’m proud of myself for recognizing the difference between “I need to play; I’ve been working too hard” and “I want to play because it’s easier.” There really is a difference, but it’s not a distinction that anyone can make except myself.
I wonder if it helps to think of off-days as mental-spiritual sick days. When our bodies are off, we tend to their needs: taking time off from work, giving them what they need, easing slowly back into our regular schedules. I am thinking now that today actually feels a lot like recovering from a sick day. I feel better, but not enough to push myself into a full day of work by the 45/15 schedule. I think I am going to eat well, sit in the sunshine, finish a book that has captivated me, and continue some sketches I started yesterday. Why shouldn’t we recognize that it’s not just our bodies that pick up ailments and need to recover? I am going to be nice to myself today, without coddling, and my instincts tell me this will be just what the doctor ordered.
satsumabug.com | Lisa Hsia 
I am addicted to Spider Solataire, and loved Plain and Simple. Sounds like a good day to me, just the kind you need now and then:)
I finished Plain and Simple and loved it too. She has two other books out that are considered sequels to it. I’ve requested one from the library!
I go back and forth between addictions to Spider Solitaire, regular Solitaire, Minesweeper, and Freecell. 😉 And other games that I have to pay for!
I so agree with you here, Lisa! I think we should all be comfortable with the conversation about the mental sickday, and also be comfortable talking about other aspects of mental illness. (That phrase itself makes a lot of people uncomfortable; that’s one of the reasons why I keep using it.) Anyone who has read my blog posts, “My Two cents about Mel Gibson” and “Unexpected Lucidity,” has a basic idea of my passion for a realistic incorporation of these issues into our collective conciousness (the same way we all know about, and are not afraid to discuss, the common cold, the flu, diabetes, arthritis, etc.) And although not every woman suffers with hormone issues, I also wish we could all chill out and discuss that, too.
Pregnant women get a free pass in the hormone department, rightly so, because we’ve talked about it as a society, and made it understandable to all but those who refuse to see. But (because of women’s very real fear of marginalization) we still don’t talk realistically about PMS, even though simply considering the problems it can cause for some women, would relieve so much stress.
I’ve been thinking a lot about diaries lately, and your post reminded me of the most important thing I ever learned from my earliest ones. I had severe dysmenorrhea http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/menstrual-cramps/DS00506 from the time I started the journey into womanhood at age nine, until my mid-twenties when it was discovered that antiprostigandins (ibuprofen, naproxen sodium, etc.) in the right dosages, could relieve the extreme pain. As a teen, I figured that I was so apprehensive about the coming pain, that I became increasingly more stressed out as my period approached. Later on, I was afraid that I might be bi-polar because, in my diaries my life every month could be tracked in the neat handwritng, seeming euphoria and ability to do just about anything with a smile for a week or so after a period — to the messy, sloping handwriting that recorded feelings of severe anger at myself and the inability to handle any life event that needed close attention, or didn’t go smoothly. The last research I’m aware of, shows that during the couple of weeks of PMS (and of course not all women get it) the hormones sharply reduce the ability to get to the deep restorative level of sleep, which increases stress and can make it difficult to deal with even the average, everyday stresses of life. These are the effects of sleep deprivation. Imagine how any teen girl would have felt, if she’d known she was all right, and been treated by a professional for her very real, physically based symptoms, instead of being treated like she was being silly, selfish or (even worse) just a big selfish baby?
Sorry for the length, Lisa, but the topic of self care and societal acceptance of human differences, feels so important to me, that I’ll take almost any opportunity to seriously discuss it. I’m really glad you wrote about it, and I’m glad you’re going easier on yourself today without regret!
I probably misspelled something else, too, but it should be antiprostaglandin.
Hi Ré! I think I’m pretty lucky as far as mental health and hormones go, but I really agree that we should be talking about these things more. I wish it was standard for everyone to get mental health checkups along with our regular physical exams. These might help diagnose serious issues for some people, and for the rest of us, it would be nice just to have someone check in with us every now and then — and maybe help alert us to our tendencies/patterns.
Lately I’ve become more aware of the many ways in which women differ from men, not just physically but psychologically. There’s a lot of accepted wisdom out there that is actually based on studies done with only male subjects, and it’s only recently that researchers have realized that women aren’t just smaller/shorter men! (One story I read last year was about how <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/magazine/18exercise-t.html?_r=1&emc=eta1"exercise affects women and men differently.) I hope these old assumptions will be corrected as more and more women are active in the sciences!
I second that!
being nice to oneself vs. being indulgent- a subtle yet important distinction to make! “I want to play because it’s easier.” <– something i grapple with daily.
I had to really swing to both ends of the spectrum to recognize the balance! I’ve had years of practice with self-indulgent doing nothing, and now I’m learning the pleasures of productive doing nothing, and how the two are different!
Wow, excellent insights! I don’t think I realized until reading this post how easy it is for me to discount my need for rest if it’s not an overt physical ailment dragging me down, and you’re right–there certainly is a difference between actually needing a break and wanting to play because it’s easier, and it’s not a simple thing to discern. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. This is a topic on which I can always use an outside perspective. 😉
I’m so glad the post resonated with you. 🙂 It’s curious; I was trying to explain my “mental sick day” concept to Erik before he’d read the post, and he had a hard time making sense of it. For him, he works when he feels like it and takes it easier when he doesn’t, and that’s that — there’s no guilt involved. It’s the same way with his eating habits. I can never decide whether my weird hangups are a peculiarly female trait — or whether Erik’s the peculiar one. 😉
OH the GUILT!!! that is SUCH a female trait 😉 guilt about eeeverything
It sure seems like it 😐
[…] mused on past off-days (or -weeks) that the only thing that seems to help get me out of them is to just go through the […]