Personal Reminder: Schedule Days Off
If I wasn’t aware of it before, I definitely am now; as it turns out, I am a major workaholic.
I have been working from home as a freelance website designer, developer and web content writer for over two years now. The reason I began working from home is because I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which affects how often I leave the house, how many people I can stand to be around at one time and even my ability (or inability, I should say,) to drive a car. So due to this “condition,” I wasn’t physically able to get myself to leave the house every day and so I quit the job I had because I knew I was going to end up getting fired anyway, and began working from home. Because I couldn’t change the fact that I have a disorder that affects my life greatly, I made changes to my lifestyle that suited my particular needs. While I don’t have the financial stability a regular 9 to 5 job secures, I no longer wake up every morning thinking ‘Oh no, I have to leave the house. I don’t want to. I don’t want to get out of bed. I can’t do this.’ and that alone is a remarkable feeling for me and eliminates a lot of pressure I used to put on myself when trying to function like a “normal” person because I had to accept that I was dealing with something that I could not change.
Before I was aware that my PTSD was affecting my life to such a degree where I physically could not bring myself to leave the house, I was told by a myriad of different people in my life that I had to be lazy; that there was obviously something wrong with me in the respect that I didn’t want to go to work and just didn’t. Now I know that wasn’t the case. Looking back, I was kicked out of high school during my senior year for absenteeism. I lost the last two jobs I had due to the fact that I couldn’t leave the house to actually go to those jobs five days a week. After a while, it started to add up and I began to realize what the problem actually was.
Within these past two years or so, I have learned not to rely so heavily on what other people in your life think about you or about something you do. Obviously I have had this problem for quite some time; I was supposed to graduate from high school in 2005 and now, almost four years later, I still have the same problem, but because I know what the problem is and made the necessary changes in my life, I have such a better understanding of it all and I know that the times where I didn’t go to school or I didn’t go to work was not because I am in any way lazy; not even close.
Because I work from home, I never get to actually leave work; it’s always here, if I’m on my computer I have it in my head that I could and should be doing work and for most people, being a freelancer means setting professional business hours, but for me, it means that if I am on the computer, I should be working. This is not good! Throughout my life I have always been a night owl and I have very sporadic sleeping patterns that do not coincide very nicely with the whole ‘professional business hours’ thing and while I have tried implementing that frame of mind in my life, it never has worked out very well. During the past few months, however, I have realized that I need to make some changes to the way I work. Because I’m a freelancer, I don’t know when I am going to have work and every year, there are a few months of the year that go by in an absolute dry spell; no work to be found at all and because I have been through those times, I have a very hard time saying no to work because who knows when I’m going to get another gig. For the past few months, I have been working pretty much non-stop and whenever one overworks themselves only one thing can happen–Burnout.
I have a knack for burning out at the worst times ever. Right before a big project is due, in the middle of a busy week where I have so much to do for many different clients and I will find myself sitting here, playing video games, reading blogs, wasting time on Plurk and Twitter and so on. So obviously, something must change–and soon. To rectify this situation, I am going to start taking two days a week off, just like a normal job, but not in the respect that I set standard days for myself. If I need to take a break and take the day off, I am going to. It is important not to deny ourselves what our brains are trying to tell us. Just like you don’t ignore your body when it screams at you to eat, we cannot ignore our minds when we need to lay low for the day or take the day and do something that we enjoy doing and that is exactly what I plan to do!
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Good for you. I pushed myself so hard that I broke. Learning my limits was a very hard lesson but now I know never to cross that bridge again.
It is easy to get burned out when working from home. I find that when I am working at home it does have it perks but it does tend to take over your life. I think it’s great that you are scheduling some time off every week. You will feel so much better for doing so.