Eating crow: humiliation by admitting wrongness or having been proven wrong after taking a strong position

Eat humble pie: to apologize and face humiliation for a serious error

I’m not sure either of these describes exactly how I feel, but they come close. I had a particularly, and unexpectedly, emotional day. Around noon, I learned that a friend’s sister overdosed last night. I didn’t know the sister, but this recovering alcoholic can tell you that there is something about hearing that this disease has claimed another person that shakes you at your core. I believe it was that shaken state that allowed everything to bubble up to the surface.

I can’t write list posts or tell you how to get through your first day of work or even how to make more room in your life for love. The only real thing I have to offer is a candid view of the way I live my life, and to be as achingly honest about it as possible. And I’ve been wrong. About several things.

It started innocently enough. I stopped by Old Navy on my way home from work to pick up a pair of pajama shorts since it’s become clear to me that Date #4 will not take the hint and leave behind the necessary boyfriend boxers I would prefer to sleep in. While there, I decided to be a good auntie to my cousin’s 1-year-old daughter and pick up a few cute little things. I dumped it all on the bed when I got home, changed into my new shorts (ah…) and stared at the clothes. They were so cute, so little, and I couldn’t wait to see her in them. A feeling started to come up… and I shoved it back down.

All day, I’d been shoving it back down.

The loss of my friend’s sister stirred up my still-raw emotions over the loss of my friend Maureen back in March. I shoved it back down. Date #4 not being able to spend his birthday weekend with me stirred up feelings of jealousy, resentment and fear. I shoved it back down. As I stared down at the little girl’s clothes, it stirred up emotions of something I’d lost years ago, and I shoved that down too.

But it wouldn’t stay down.

As I tried to finish going about my night (I needed to blog, get my work and running clothes ready, make some concrete business decisions…), it just wouldn’t stay down. Something wasn’t right. It’s been this way for a few months but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I thought it was maybe my sinuses, maybe not exercising, not having my work and life balanced just the right way or not doing the right kind of work. I searched, all the while shooing away this nagging feeling that I wasn’t working something important out. Shoved it down.

It came up. All at once.

I miss Maureen and her death has affected me. I can’t ignore that. I don’t want to feel that pain because it is so very strong. I am missing a friend, a person who totally got me, who gave to me and took from me, to whom I told “I love you” every time we said goodbye. I wasn’t dealing with those feelings, that grief. I ignored it.

What I really want when I imagine a good, fine life for myself is to own my own café, just as I envisioned it in December, an airy cozy shop full of funky vintage furniture, good coffee and an owner (me!) who knows everybody. I would be in a cool town, maybe not too big but too small. Somehow I got the notion into my head that it just wasn’t grand enough a business for a smarty-pants like me. So I shelved it, said it was best left for retirement.

The most startling realization to you, my readers, might be what else I see in this picture. As I run my own successful café, I very clearly see children running around my shop. I want children. Three years ago, I was an alcohol who could not bring myself to bring a child into my world. That experience has been far more impacting than I ever thought, and fear has driven me in that regard.

I realize now that when it comes to the emotional things in my life, it’s going to take much longer to heal than I thought. It wouldn’t say much about my friendship with Maureen if I weren’t still moved to tears a mere five months later. I am. It wouldn’t be treating my disease with enough respect to think that the choices I made years ago because of my drinking would just go away on their own. They haven’t.

As to my business choices, I think I simply veered off course looking for something perhaps a little more glamorous, a little more grand than my simple dream of owning my own coffee shop. But now that I’m back there, it’s like a warm blanket, familiar and just right.

In some respects, I’m back where I was in December, which isn’t necessarily bad. I feel a little sheepish, a little humbled admitting that my ego inflated as I attempted to fluff myself up to meet these grand ideas. I don’t always know what I’m doing. I thought I was just putting on a brave face. When I put a brave face on, I only fool myself. And fool myself, I did.

Life is a tricky thing. I’m skeptical of anyone who says they’ve got it all figured out. Especially in these early years, as we try to form ideas of who we want to be and how we can become those people, certainly we’ll look a little foolish along the way. I guess I’m just happy to be trying.

When I began to hear the phrase “work/life balance” thrown around, I figured it didn’t apply to me. It was my older coworkers with family who mostly used it. Work/life balance meant “time with the kids and spouse.” So I dismissed it. It had nothing to do with me, single childless Holly who has the energy to work three or four jobs and train for marathons.

Then I got a boyfriend.

Anyone who has read this blog for the past 8 weeks or so knows that I’ve struggled to keep everything on my plate plus boyfriend on the side, but things keep slipping off like some overly eager kid’s plate at the dessert buffet. I’ve talked to friends, mentors, even a life coach, listed my priorities, and promptly removed… nothing.

There are so many things I want to pursue that I can’t imagine cutting anything. It’s asking a lot that I’m not adding anything. 

So, I’ve struggled to show the boyfriend that I am committed to us, that I’m willing to put in the time, that I want to spend time together. Actually, that might not be true. I think all I’ve really done is figured out ways to carve out pieces of the week where I can relax or do some work with him. At any rate, this is a new class of balancing act for me – the work/life balance.

Huh? Work-what balance? To me, life and work are fairly seamlessly integrated. I’m not sure what I’d rather be doing on a Sunday besides sitting in my favorite café with a hot chocolate, blogging my guts out. Who wouldn’t want to be integrating a printer into a wireless network on a Tuesday evening? I can honestly say that most nights I would rather be slinging coffee than watching television on the couch.

Instead of saying “Life? What life?” I have “Work? What work?” Unfortunately, it does take up a lot of time though, and I wonder at the end of the day what kind of energy I have leftover for my relationship – for love. I would say the majority of nights I dive headlong into my bed and I’m literally lights out before the BF flips the switch.

So what does this new work/love balance thing mean? I’m not really sure. I can’t say I’ve got it figured out. Perhaps it’s a sign of my youth, but mostly fear swirls around it. If you’re in love, should you place a higher value on that rather than your work? Should one or the other be the entrée and the other the side dish? Is it a matter of finding a person who makes you want to stop spending so much time on your work, makes you think it’s the higher value automatically? Is my relationship to my work and career so perverse that I should just give up on love altogether?

In all honesty, I am sometimes struck with the fear that my work is my only one true love in life. I have no doubt that God made me and business out of the same clay, sprinkling entrepreneurship in my blood like stars in the sky. It’s always there for me, ready to make my day, impatient when I’m away and greeting me with new ideas and excitement. Where does love fit into my already-existent love affair with work?

I glance at the title of my website, WorkLoveLife. People have asked me if that’s how I prioritize the three, if it means anything special. Honestly, it was the only combination of those three words available for a domain name. But, maybe that is it’s significance in my life – at the end of the day, I make work, love and life fit together the only way available to me.

I hadn’t written a blog post in a few days, almost a week actually. I was fresh out of ideas and inspiration. Granted, I had blogged for a good four or five days in a row, but still. Sitting at my desk at work, my eyes had glazed over in computer screen hypnosis. I skipped lunch and needed to get out, empty gas tank be damned.

As I drove, they started coming to me – ideas for blog posts. By the time I got to the café, I’d thought of and developed four solid articles in my head. I realized as I grabbed my coffee and settled at a table that I’d been completely lost the entire drive over. It came together – I hadn’t been driving as much as I normally do because gas prices were (are) ridiculously high. I stayed at Date #4’s place all week, which is 5 minutes from work as opposed to the 25 minutes it takes from my place. Sure, I saved a bundle on gas, but at what cost?

In my life, I don’t get a lot of alone time. Nothing compared to people with kids, but in comparison to being single, alone time is scarce these days. As I was telling Date #4 just yesterday, there are some things I’ll only do when I’m bored. Mainly, cleaning and tidying up in general, but I would lump “getting blog ideas” in there as well.

The high cost of gas has me thinking about a scene in “Singles” (one of my all-time favorite movies… I still heart you, Cameron Crowe, even though you made “Elizabethtown”). The main character is telling his love interest about a light rail transit project he’s proposing to his city. As he’s explaining all of the benefits, she says, “Yeah, but I love my car.” 

Perhaps we love our cars because it’s the one place where we don’t have to deal with people. Or maybe it’s because it can become our one-man karaoke machine. Or perhaps it’s just the place were we get our best ideas.

Either way, our dependence on oil might make the long car trip a thing of the past. Instead of thoughtfully losing ourselves in the highway, we’re watching our odometers and our gas gauges, calculating times between stop lights on our daily routes so that we don’t have to brake or come to a full stop (hey, it saves gas).

I’m not saying we shouldn’t save on gas, I’m just saying that unless we get some sort of alternative fuel, our old ways will die. And with them goes an untold number of little streams of creativity and peace.

Photo from Flickr Creative Commons user freeparking.

I’m having a little accountability issue. As in, I have none. I have a lot of goals, not just in my career, but also in my personal life, my finances and my health. As I’ve struggled to regain my footing after falling in love, I’ve come to find my real issue is now that I simply lack the motivation to accomplish on a day-to-day basis, and that daily action is critical to the fulfillment of larger goals.

I know one thing to be true when it comes to setting goals and achieving them: the most surefire method is to chip away at it one step at a time. Daily action is necessary. If you want to train to run a marathon, you’ve got to actually put your shoes on and go for a run. If you want to pay off your credit cards, you cannot charge anything to them today. I prefer to live one day at a time this way. When I start to use the word “tomorrow,” I get myself into a world of trouble. I won’t accomplish much with “I’ll run tomorrow” or “I’ll stop using my credit card tomorrow.” This method of goal procrastination will leave you stranded. You just need to start.

Enter accountability. Now that you’ve decided to go through with the daily action method you could use a little reinforcement. I used to get this through Guy I Was Seeing. Though we’re still friends, I don’t get to talk to him as much as I used to. Read more about what an accountability partner can do for you here.

What happens if you can’t find an accountability partner or group? Or if you’re the only one who ever does anything in said partnership/group? I’m not sure, but I’m taking a stab with my blog. Yep, you guys are now my accountability partners. I find it hard to make excuses to you all… mostly because my lame excuses look really bad in print. That, and I’ve sworn to be as honest and as transparent as possible.

I know I won’t meet all of my goals 100 percent of the time, but the nice thing about accountability partners is not the negative pressure – it’s the positive pressure. It’s reassuring to think you guys know what my goals are, what I’m doing to get there, and that you get to see the results when I do what I say and when I don’t. It might be corny and a little arrogant, but for some reason I have the feeling that you guys have my back.

All mushiness aside, my monthly accountability posts will basically have a “where I’m at” theme. I’ll review my goals, what I’ve done, what I haven’t done and what I plan to do. The areas in which I will be accountable are broad: physical (exercise, health, diet), relationships (family, significant other, friends), career (job, entrepreneurship), financial (credit, savings), spirituality (meditation, sobriety), general (emotion, mood, life goals).

I realize that not everyone wants to read about me, me, me, but my hope is that my transparency in these things will allow people to see what really works… and what really doesn’t. I’ll be posting the first one tomorrow.

How do you stay accountable? How do you reach your goals, little and big?

When I met Date #4, I wasn’t looking for anything serious. I was simply mixing a little business with pleasure when my online dating research yielded a surprising result – a dateable, attractive man with whom I was compatible. My life was run at a hectic, but efficient and highly effective pace. There simply wasn’t a whole lot of room. I liked it that way.

Things started slowly. I told him I wasn’t looking for anything serious, that I was, ahem, very busy and important. No time for a relationship, not looking for that sort of thing. He said he understood, respected my priorities, etc.

Then I fell in love with him.

The “serious” thing needed revising, obviously. As two people are apt to do when they find they enjoy one another’s company, we spent a lot of time together. 

A lot.

I stopped running. I stopped blogging as regularly. I stopped doing laundry and grocery shopping. I was deep in Cloud Cuckoo Land, as I like to call it. That place where newly formed couples spend way too long looking into each other’s eyes, sleeping really late on weekends, and having lots and lots of hot monkey sex. 

As much as I knew this was going to happen, I couldn’t stop it. Perhaps I didn’t want to stop it. What the hell? Falling in love is fantastic. Why skip all the fun stuff and move straight into routine? 

Incorporating Date #4 into my life isn’t the same as making a new friend or having a relative move into town. This is someone that I hope to have a meaningful relationship with. Anyone who has been in a relationship for a period of time knows that it takes time to get to know someone. I liked Date #4 and I wanted to learn about him – that takes time. Granted, you can take your time getting to know someone, but I tend to be an extremist with a “good” button instead of an “easy” button. If it makes me feel good or happy, I’ll slam that damn button till it’s broke. Luckily, I didn’t do that here.

Armed with a little bit of knowledge of myself and my habits, I tried to resist Cloud Cuckoo Land, but it was simply too alluring. GIWS and I had managed to see each other only once a week, twice tops, throughout the few months we dated. I tried to do this again, but to no avail.

When I got sick (again), my frustration reared its head. I had gained 5 lbs. I was completely out of racing shape. I’d been eating entire meals out of the vending machines at work. Thanks to my fourth sinus infection this year, I was waylaid and unable to stay awake long enough to do anything other than go to work. I reached my breaking point when my libido disappeared. WTF?!

A week later, I got better and I got some perspective. Date #4 and I have been together for only two months. I realized that I could maintain my old schedule and kick him out of my life or I could find a new routine. That period of everything going to hell was just a slash-and-burn method of prepping the soil for a new life. One that involves the man that I love and all the activities I love.

What I ended up having to do was first explain to him what was going on in my head. He understood and didn’t take it personally at all, which was essential for me to feel comfortable moving forward. I explained to him that there are a lot of things I enjoy doing that I haven’t been doing lately, and that I need a routine or schedule in order to make it all fit into my life.

I looked at my schedule, needs and priorities. I looked at his schedule, needs and priorities. He has two dogs, so he can’t stay over too often. I live out of the way of my work and his house, so I have to bring all my stuff for work if I’m staying over. It made more sense to do all that if I were staying two nights in a row. For both of our sanity and respect of personal space, I decided two nights apart would be good for us. Thus, a schedule emerged. I would stay with him Wednesdays and Thursdays, and he would stay with me on Tuesdays and Fridays. Sundays and Mondays we had off, and Saturdays I left to whim (even I don’t try to plan everything).

I make sure to bring my running shoes to his place and try to take the dogs out with me. I also run on the evenings we’re not seeing each other. The beginning of the week can be overwhelming for me, so that’s why I picked those two days to spend apart. It gives me the time to work on my blog, get my clothes ready for the week, and to generally spend time with myself, which I think is important in any relationship.

Once I identified the problem and communicated that to him, I was able to then ask, what now? How can I have both – him and my old life? Planning the nights was a great first step. It allows me to plan what will need to happen and when. The other stuff is simply up to me. Once I finished the relay marathon I had spent months training for in May, I had a hard time staying motivated, so I signed up for a race on July 4 and started looking for more to keep me running.

Maybe this is easy for some people to figure out, but I was really happy being single. My life was happy and whole when I met Date #4, so much in fact that if it weren’t for my sister’s sage advice to not let opportunities pass me by, I probably wouldn’t have made the leap.

I’m glad that I did, but that period of transition can be tough. I think it’s important to be honest with yourself, to communicate your frustration without laying any blame, and to get into the solution. Dwelling in the problem while I was sick yielded nothing but a depressing blog post (sorry!). Once I decided to try a solution, I was already feeling like my old self and it didn’t take long to get back on track.

Oh, and my libido came back. Thank god.

[Photo credit: Evan Romine]

Hey, everyone. I know it’s been a long time since I’ve posted. I’m getting over (yet another) sinus infection. I read an article on Brazen Careerist this morning about quarter-life crises and left a comment so lengthy, I figured it might as well be a blog entry.

I’m not sure I believe in “quarter life crises.” I do think that (more than perhaps before) our generation is having a hard time with the transition to true adulthood. I know I thought I had arrived at adulthood when I was living with a long-time boyfriend in my own apartment with a great job at 23. I was wearing suits and holding conference calls and grocery shopping for two. I was playing “life,” but I wasn’t really doing it. I was still thinking and acting immaturely. I was 25 when my “crisis” began, a painful period of realization, deconstruction and transformation. It took a year, but I finally grew up. So, here’s the comment I left:

“My own “quarter life crisis” happened right on time – 25. For me, it was spurred on by the realization that I was an alcoholic and needed help. Everything else changed, too, though. I was laid off, my boyfriend and I broke up, I moved out of our townhouse, and my car blew up… within a month.

Now that’s extreme, but I’ve found with my friends also that these crises have a pattern: malaise/a feeling of inertia preceding a life-impacting event followed by a period of transformation. Having gone through that extreme example before most of my friends hit their crisis stage, I’ve sort of counseled a few of them through it.

Here’s what I’ve found: We’ve had a prolonged adolescence. Despite paying my way through college and living on my own, I still have an “emergency card” that my mom pays. I used this for about a year when I ran out of money before my next pay period. For some reason, this life-changing event (whether it’s getting sober or finally moving out of your parents’ house or breaking up with your significant other) sparks a period of transformation. We begin to finally replace the ideas we questioned in college with ideas of our own. We start to make bold decisions on our own. We take proverbial leaps of faith in our lives. In short, we mature.

That’s all a quarter-life crisis is – a painful period of maturation. I don’t know about you, but nobody told me it would be so difficult. It’s been like tearing down a house little by little until all your left with it the frame. Then there’s a period of reconstruction. If you are painstaking in this period of your life, it will serve you well down the line.

My own “crisis” lasted about a year. I feel as if I’m just coming out of it. I learned so much, about life and about myself. My advice is not to just try to glean over it. Examine it, spend time on it. Tear down your house, imagine the perfect mature version of yourself and then do the actions. That’s the hardest part – the mundane crap, like paying the bills on schedule, schlepping out of bed at 6 am to get to work on time, and skipping happy hour to go for a run. That’s real life. That’s what we have such a hard time adjusting to.

We’re all just growing up. Finally.”

I’m staring back at my reflection wearily. I’ve just finished washing my face for bed when I realize why I’m so tired of looking at myself in the mirror every night. It smacks me it comes back so suddenly. This is what you looked like before you got a grip, I remember.

There’s a lack of color here. There’s been a lack of color since… since… when did it fade? Somewhere around falling in love and completing my relay marathon only a month ago. I used that week after the race to “reward myself.” I let myself eat poorly and slack off on my training… way off. As in, didn’t do it all.

That week has yawned into a month.

I can feel the little roll at tummy when I slump in my bad posture. It isn’t just that my face has lost color and that I have probably put on two or three pounds. I haven’t been sleeping enough, not what I call a healthful amount. I haven’t been going to enough meetings and I can feel that my spiritual well-being is affected. I’ve been eating entire meals out of the vending machine at work.

This isn’t the dark cloud of grief that rolled overhead back at the beginning of April. This is laziness. Knowing how to pick myself up and not being willing to do the work to bring that about. In my 12-step program, we say that when the pain is enough, we will act.

Luckily my threshold for pain has become amazingly low. Tonight, one glance in the mirror does the trick. I’m tired of being lazy, I assert to my innermost self. This sucks. Let’s quit this shit and get on with the rest of it.

I could go on and on as to why this has happened – work has been slow and uninspiring, a new relationship needs attention, there are things to do besides train for races that are months away. Excuses. Excuses I’ve been willing to make and accept because I am lazy and unmotivated. So here I am. Out of racing shape, pallid faced with an upset stomach and three pounds heavier. I’ve even been reduced to participating in pointless blog commenting, something I usually have enough serenity to not get involved in.

This one is all on me. I’ve written before about accountability partners and the wonders they can work for helping you to stay motivated. That’s fine and well, unless you stop calling them… especially when you want to avoid being, er… accountable.

In the past I could spend an entire blog post on how I’m going to pull my shit together, exactly what I’ll do and in what order to get things back on track, reassure you the reader that I am indeed doing it. And then promptly sit on my ass for two more weeks before I finally follow through. I won’t do that here. I’m not sure when my motivation will come back to me or when exactly I’ll decide that it’s been enough.

I think I just did though.

It’s been suggested that I’m wound a *little* tight. I’ll be the first to admit that I have problems relaxing. I tend to be sort of a black-or-white, stop-or-go kind of person, at least when it comes to my work and myself. For the past five months or so, I haven’t been able to let go of this tension. I’ve sort of had this feeling that I need it to keep going, that somehow relaxing would cause me to lose my momentum. 

On the other hand, I know that I need to relax every now and then; otherwise I won’t be as productive as I could be. And so it has been with this in mind – increased productivity – that I have set about trying to “relax.” Like any good workaholic, I schedule a break. I cordon off a largish chunk of the day and I say this is where I will relax. 

There has been some major backsliding going on in my life the past three or four weeks. Let’s just say some slacking has occurred… it’s like cancer. It started in one area of my life and spread quickly to the others. Part of this can be blamed on tragedy and illness, but that crutch has gotten old. It’s time to throw out the excuses and get things back on track now.

Sleep
I used to be the Queen of Good Rest. I always slept well and for the optimal time. I guarded my sleep schedule like it was Fort Knox. I defended it and nurtured it. It’s as if I’ve spent the past month beating the shit out of it and calling it a Bad Kid. It hates me now and acts like an angry toddler. When I do give myself the time to get a good night’s rest, I have problems either falling asleep or staying asleep. When I wake up, I don’t feel refreshed. I feel more tired. Last night I slept for 9 hours to make up for the 5 ½ hour sleep cycles I’ve been doing. I feel less awake. People even say I look tired. I need to get back on a schedule. I’m sure it has to do with the fact that it’s been erratic.

Diet
I’ve lost three more pounds. Most women would be excited by this. I am not. This has nothing to do with healthy weight loss – I’m not eating right. And I’m running distance. As a distance runner, weight loss is your enemy (after a certain point anyways). I am usually vigilant about my diet – 6 or 7 small, regimented meals per day. I make sure I eat enough protein, iron, dairy and good carbs. Lately, I’ve been skipping meals, not really eating anything healthy, etc. I can feel how awful it is for me. Eating well takes time. You need to get to the grocery regularly for fresh produce and plan your meals ahead if you have a jam-packed day like I do.

Running/exercise
I run four days a week like it’s my religion. Since everything happened last month, I have seriously slacked. It’s Thursday and I haven’t run at all this week. Now, this is serious business. I have a 5K and a relay marathon to run in May. I’m not where I need to be. Aside from that, running is my release. I feel energized and empowered when I’m done with a good run. I particularly enjoy the time I spend outside doing it. It’s relaxing. Skimping on this area of my life does exponential harm to me; it kills my relaxation and my health.

Budget
Ugh. To be fair, I’ve lost 18 pounds since I got sober. The first five came off right away (I was a beer drinker – muy fattening). The rest I lost in the past 5 months or so through the combination of a healthy diet and running. So, I’m down a few sizes in almost everything, especially work clothes. That’s where I’m blowing my money. I’m close to overdrafting my bank account, and that is a place I really hate to be.

General cleanliness
Please step away from the apartment, miss. Really, things are pretty messy on the home front. I’m never in my apartment and since I am moving next weekend, I decided not to worry about doing much until then. Really, all I’ve done is create more work for myself when I start packing. The car is in pretty bad shape too – a cleaning inside and out is definitely in order.

Tardiness
Running around at break-neck speed has caused me to forget just about everything. (Hello? I brought my running clothes, but left my sneakers. Is anyone home?) I am sleeping as late as I can, and thus making it to work perpetually 15 minutes late, which causes me to leave 15 minutes late, throwing my entire schedule into chaos. That does not look good to the boss either. And, let’s face it, tardiness is tacky.

The Solution
The best people in my life always tell me to get out of the problem and into the solution. Having defined the problem, I know how to tackle it. One of my major problems has been budgeting time for preparation. Most of the things above can be eliminated if I will simply slow down and take the time to prepare for them.

I need to prepare my food for the next day. I need to get my bag of running gear together the night before. I have to take the time to sit down with monthly bills twice a month and look at how much I can afford to spend on clothes, etc. I need to spend just 10 little minutes cleaning up when I get home instead of falling onto the couch with the laptop for an hour. And finally, I need to guard my sleep schedule like it was the Most Precious and Dear Thing on the Earth again.

Meetings, e-mail alerts, busy work… these are the most frequently addressed productivity killers. I have read books and found work-arounds for all of them. What I can’t get around, what kills my productivity more than any form of corporate red tape is getting sick. Ironically, this seems to be the one productivity killer I can’t find a book on. Americans seem bound and determined to a.) not take care of themselves, and then b.) attempt to keep working, thereby dragging out their illness and spreading it around. This exponentially decreases productivity.

Two weeks ago, I got a sinus infection. This is a fairly common occurrence for me, given my allergies. What I should’ve done was take a break, get some decent sleep, watch my diet, hydrate more than usual, and get some good sleep. What I did instead was continue a ridiculously busy schedule and pay no attention to any of the afore-mentioned factors. Each day my sinus infection was compounded by the loss of sleep it brought. With no time in my schedule to make it up, I was blessed with a raging case of laryngitis.

Because I wouldn’t take two or three days to run at a slower-than-usual pace, I lost a good two weeks of productivity. I ran at my bare minimum, calling into work twice because of how sick I was. When I was at work, I was unfocused, tired and probably spreading some major germ action. My appearance was tired, messy and unkempt. My ‘give a crap’ was busted. I lost my voice for two or three days entirely, and only recently got my voice back (I’ve been borrowing Kathleen Turner’s voice for the past 10 days).

I took a few lessons away from this. These are pretty basic, but it’s amazing how glaring they can become when you’re completely wiped out for a few weeks.

Heed the Warning Signs
Given that I attended two funerals for people I cared about very much within one week of the other, I should’ve taken some steps to guard against illness. The mind-body connection is amazingly strong, and stress can and will take you down with the ship. When your life gets stressful, treat yourself better than usual. I’m not talking about an extra glass of wine; I mean you should take it easy on yourself. Get rid of the things in your schedule that aren’t essential and crucial and get some rest.

Watch Your Diet
What you eat is the fuel that you provide your body to keep you going. Treat your body like a Porsche. Are you going to put regular gas in that bad boy? I didn’t think so. You’re going premium all the way. It ought to be the same way with your diet, especially when you’re sick. Think about what’s going to help you get better and make a conscious effort to supplement your diet with the things you’ll need to ward off prolonged illness. Get some protein, eat dark green veggies, and for heaven’s sake, eat some oranges. The worst thing you can do is stop eating. You give your body nothing to use as defense and it will only get worse.

Hit the Hay
Your body is going to need more time to recharge than usual. If you are used to sleeping 6-7 hours every night, you’re going to have to make time to get more in order to get well. I also find naps help me get better faster. When I’m not feeling well, I’ll get home from work and snooze for a good 90 minutes. I find this is long enough to be effective and short enough to not ruin my regular bedtime.

Get a Little Exercise
Don’t go running any 10Ks, but do a little bit of exercise if you are physically able when you feel something coming on or are coming out of being sick. Some exertion will boost your immune system and help you feel well faster. Don’t take up anything new while you’re sick; just do whatever you usually do at about half the time or pace. For me, this has taken the form of a light jog because I am already a regular runner. If I can exercise when I feel something coming on, it usually wards it off. When I do get sick, then as soon as I get over the hump I try to do a little something to boost my immune system again.

Cut Yourself Some Slack
Highly motivated people are usually their own worst critics. Beating yourself up mentally when you’re sick is counterproductive (as a matter of fact, it’s usually counterproductive, but that’s another post). Take this time to go easy on yourself. Again, that mind-body connection is strong and it is real. Stressing yourself out is going to make you sicker, longer.