I lost my way today. I woke up after a horrible night’s sleep and all of the demons I’ve worked so hard to banish came crawling back. The feelings of being overwhelmed, too busy to be this unmotivated and desperately needing a break came crashing over me. I spent the morning reluctantly working right up until lunchtime when I decided my feeble efforts were not enough to keep going. Seriously. For someone who lives an incredibly charmed life, today was a battle of the inside. The outside is seemingly perfect, complete with a cloudless blue sky. But the inside? It was dark and dreary.
Then, two things happened. First, I retreated to my bed to take a nap. The sweetest little boy came with me. I didn’t sleep. Instead, I needed to give what little bit I had to give to someone or something. Twister, our first boy kitty, was it. Now, Twister’s story is incredibly sad. Starving, he had been a stray that we had been feeding for about six weeks before he showed up one day desperately ill with a respiratory infection. He was breathing so hard. All of our angst about how we were ever going to get him to trust us enough to adopt him were swept away in the urgency. We took our shot, caged him and got him to the vet. Antibiotics, anti-parasites and a lot of love later, Twister has recovered as far as he will ever recover. But too much good food after starving for too long meant he wound up with a mega colon and a weight problem. Starving and sick for too long left him with a heart murmur. So, he’s got a couple of strikes against him. But at age six, our sweet boy is now doing well. Still if there was ever a little boy who needed all the love anyone could give him, it’s him. And if you’re ever feeling sorry enough for yourself that you retreat to your bed for a nap, I hope you have a Twister to come with you.
So, instead of sleeping, I gave Twister love. And we talked. Mostly, I talked. I told him how sweet he was, how lucky we were to have him and how at that moment, he was the exact right thing I needed. Twister? He purred a lot. And shut his eyes. When Twister purrs and shuts his eyes, you know he gets it. For someone who once had so little, he now doesn’t have a care in the world because he knows he’s safe and loved.
Twister brought me a bit out of my funk. The rest was up to me… or the basement. I took some pillows downstairs to be stored after cleaning out a closet this weekend. And walked right into a puddle. On Saturday, we had gotten 4-5 inches of rain. Normally, we never get water of any sort in the basement, but this was a lot of water that came down very fast. We actually had standing water in our yard. Evidently, we also had a little standing water in the basement. Mind you, it wasn’t much. In fact, between two small puddles, just one board, one small piece of drywall and one box got ruined. Everything else was either up on pallets or away from the fray.
Regardless, however, we were galvanized into action. For about 45 minutes, it was vacuum, clean, vacuum, pick up, dry off, take outside to dry in the sun, vacuum, clean, pick up… . You get the picture. In the end, we left a small box fan to keep drying out the basement, turned the geothermal onto continuous to keep the air circulating and have gone back to our regular programming while we let Mother Nature and the fan dry out the remaining items. Still, it broke me out of the doldrums. It’s hard to feel sorry for yourself for having no problems when you have to be responsible and take care of a problem.
And now that I’m over it all, it’s time to take stock of why today went so awry.
The fact is, I should have planned to be off this week. It was an unforced error on my part. Because I work for myself, I can control the tempo of my work – if I plan in advance. But I can’t just decide last minute that I want the week off. So, I didn’t sleep last night with regret that I didn’t take the week off and I woke up irritated that I had to work. It’s an important lesson for me to learn as a sole proprietor. It resonates strongly with me that if I don’t work, I don’t get paid. So, I tend to value working over taking a break. But the key to most things in life – particularly when it comes to work – is balance. And if I don’t learn that balance, days like these are going to happen more and more often. And all that will do, honestly, is lay to waste all of the good work I did in starting my own microbusiness.
Now, I’ve learned the lesson. When I start to feel fatigued, it’s time to take a break. A long weekend, a week off, or a scheduled break is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s a sign of a healthy pace. If I’m going to do this thing successfully and for a long time, I need to remember that.
And I also re-learned another lesson about love today. To the outside world, it appears that we rescued four cats. Truth is? They rescued us. And they continue to rescue us. My sweet Twister is just an example of how much our pets give to us. I just adore the big guy. And today, he was exactly what his momma needed.
The Yuppie Homesteader 