With chronic illness and disability it can be SO good to sometimes do less than your max for no particular reason*, and do things that are nice and feed your soul instead of all the never ending essentials. I call these: pacing 'holiday' days. I create a really quiet, low demand schedule, removing all 'have to'. And then do something nice that lifts my soul and has no 'ought to' attached to it.
It's very different from resting when "it's essential and I have no other option that doesn't involve crash and burn". That requires huge amounts of self discipline and work. This involves giving myself permission to do whatever I feel like doing (within reason!) - and it doesn't have to be sustainable.
Holiday days help to:
- Top up my energy reserves.
- Increase - or stabilise - my baseline capacity a bit.
- Act as a 'fire break' to stop long term overdoing from escalating into a significant decline in health.
- Really helps my mental health and overall perspective.
Today it's sunny. And I managed to have a 'holiday' morning. I sat in the sun, wrapped up all snug and soft, listening to an audiobook and doing cross-stitch. Even though I had enough energy to do more.
It was exactly what I needed. I love seeing the pattern grow. And I love being outside in winter sun. It was like a release valve in my head being opened and letting out the tension.
I then had a really productive meeting for a couple of hours in the afternoon - before going back to 'holiday' mode.
I could have done more. But I didn't. And it was totally the right decision.
*Note: This strategy won't work for everyone. For people with severe levels of fatigue, the basics of living (eating, breathing, going to the toilet) can take all available energy, making this kind of day incredibly difficult (sometimes impossible) to achieve.
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