Monday Musing – Teachers and Email

Well howdy all! Looks like Monday is here again, which reminds me of an underground ad I saw the other day:

Anywho… I did something terrible that I should not have done yet. I checked my work email. I know!!! I’m terrible. So here’s the question that any work-aholic can relate to once in a while:

I gave myself 3 weeks…. 3 weeks of being turned off from that work anxiety but it wasn’t until half a week in London that I discovered how to turn off my phone notifications, and now I should still have until July 10th if I planned correctly but alas, I was weak. I checked it last night and my god, I feel awful, just awful. So my musing now…

If you are a work-aholic and may even share in dysthymia like me, you may understand this. This Monday “off” I am still gripped with the anxiety of needing to do so many things, and I see them clearly and they all take time. That’s fine. I’ll do them. I’m not avoiding them but I gave myself a clear date to begin work again and I can’t seem to honor it especially after some of the emails I read last night (yes, I did it at night right before bed, shame on me!). So here I am, musing because this is something I committed to doing and actually want to do, but feeling guilty all the while.

One of my favorite phrases that guides me in my work is “If you have to eat a frog, eat it in the morning, and if you must eat two, eat the bigger one first.” This is a take on Mark Twain’s hilarious quote about eating a live frog in the morning and nothing worse can happen to you later on… so gross. Anyway, pair that with my incessant and imbalanced drive to be productive and purposeful and I find that I cannot rest, take care, and sometimes even enjoy myself. There is always something pulling all that away from me and unless someone pulls me from it, that is where I exist and will remain.

Sometimes I feel like, although overall understanding once its explained, people lack inherent consideration of other people’s mental care.