Spent.

Ariane,

I can totally relate. I went to bed at 3.47 am last night. I'm still curled in my couch trying to force myself to get off my couch and go to the office. But my apartment is so quiet right now, it's almost a crime not to make use of the very few hours this place is quiet (my upstairs neighbours have a very badly behaved child who throws tantrums and screams in high pitched notes all the f!@# time).

My suggestion - yeah, take one day off. It's scary but fun. :D I've done it!

Kelly!

Yeah, it's actually great advice, it sounds easy, but I'm totally bad at putting myself first most of the time! I totally need some tough love about it. ;-)

That reminds me, I gotta email you, which I'm gonna do right now!

Oh, I can definitely commiserate with you on all of this. I get quite burned out too. Only yesterday, I realized I hadn't taken a photo FOR ME in well over a month. Meaning not something for clients, but just because I wanted to take a photo.

Sometimes just some serious reassessment of what is important is in store, even if you feel like you owe stuff to other people, sometimes you have to say "screw them" and do what you need to do for yourself.

Perhaps not the best advise, but it's all I got :).

haha, thanks alex :-) "life-pruning"...points for gardening analogy, i love it! that's totally a good one. and dvd's in pj's also sounds really lovely ;-)

awww! very well-written blog (and way to bring the term "pod person" back). it could be the time of year, and also your move downtown - people are around a lot more, and it seems like the more you go out, the more people you meet, which means you get invited out more...

i also think it's good you realize you need the time to relax and re-charge, and not just keep on going until you burn out. sometimes, when you're feeling a bit overwhelmed, it's almost a good pruning tool for your life to force you to cut out all the extraneous stuff, so when your life calms down, you'll only have things in it that are important to you :)

not that you need more advice...but baths = :) , dvds while in pjs = :)...i am on a cuddle-hiatus but a couple yoga stretches also help unwind.

as for the fb / IM thing...mandatory 10hr work days have me checking more than i should, once my next job ramps up i like your idea of a 1day/wk detox. have a good one!

Damn straight, it's high on my list of events to attend ;)

Now that is some words to live by: "Sitting my ass on the couch *IS* an event." :-)

Perhaps you need to think of "sitting your ass on the couch" more as an event and less as something you do when you have nothing else on the go?

aw sweetie! i've been thinking about you so much <3 i think i tried calling...maybe saturday? i can't remember. i wish i could steal you away and we could run off somewhere relaxing...

i am also a big fan of lunch away from the computer--if other people are having lunch at the same time, i chat, but otherwise i always have a book at work, it's one of my best reading times esp. for comics/graphic novels which i've been getting into.

i've been on skype a bit more lately, i try to remember to turn it on. maybe i will catch you on there sometime.

take care of yourself, try not to let all the crazy get to you TOO much.

love you to bits!

dude,
i hear you. i just feel so fucking overwhelmed by everything.

i stopped checking my email/daily blogs in the evenings and over the weekend. friday afternoon is my last time and then not on again until monday. if people need me they will have to wait. nothing is so important it can't wait 24 hours. or 48 for that matter.
i hate the computer more and more everyday, since i'm forced to sit in front of it almost every single day for 8hours.
i also only do facebook once every 3 weeks-ish. i just don't care enough.
i'm learning to turn off the monitor of my computer at lunch too. If they are going to force me to take a lunch break, then i'm going to take one. AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER and all it's time-wastage. go team knitting/book/crossword puzzle.

i've also stopped answering the phone. but hey when did i ever? i don't think that i've actually answered the phone in the past 10 days. when did you call?
yeah. i hate the phone.

i just want everything to stop and go away for awhile. why can't everything leave me alone and let me rest! (and by that i totally don't me you, i just mean *everything*)

@alexa--yes, i think i might have to start turning it all off a couple hours before i go to bed so i can calm the mind... also snuggling is probably the BEST :-)

@scott--(consider yourself unstretched!) those last two points and last sentence are probably the ones i need to be paying most attention to...(i think i've got the jaiku/IM thing somewhat solved)...in fact those last few are a little too good...i think either you still have a fever and it's the fever talking, or well...you are a pod-scott.

@parv--it's not so much that i think anyone/thing would miss me, but more that i have this dislike of missing things! and yes, i KNOW i need to let go of that! i've done the priority list thing, and it stresses me out more, so i don't do it anymore. and as far as the 3-4 hour work schedule...well isn't that nice that you can do that. unfortunately, not everyone has such a flexible schedule available to them! it's not really an option for me. :-p

I mostly ignore everything. A simple question to ask yourself is: Who would care if I ignored Jaiku, Facebook, Google Reader. Gmail? Why?

And usually the answer is that it wouldn't really matter.

I go to bed and write down three things that I would like to get done the next day. That's it. No big deal.

I work in one big 4 hour spurt or two 3 hours spurts each day. 7 days a week. It's much more productive than the 9-5, 40 hour work week. People weren't meant to sit at a desk for that long in one sitting.

btw.. you stretched me in your photo! :-p

hmm... solutions... i've gotten pretty good at selectively focusing on what i need to be, so the whole jaiku/email/skype interruptions don't affect me too much. Some suggestions...
* intead of taking a day off of IM ... take like 2 or 3 hour periods off at the same time every day. And in addition, take other periods whenever you're getting online information overload.
* turn off jaiku IM more frequently
* i subscribe to very few feeds that update more than once per day. otherwise i get overloaded with them.
* don't be afraid to use the mark all as read button. it's there for a reason ;). in fact, maybe make a day of the week where you use it religiously, probably either the very end or very start of the week.
* make a list of all the optional things you've committed yourself to in the next month (even if you've just committed on a personal level) ... cancel half of them (or whatever you feel seems will make it more reasonable)
* break promises for things that are putting too much weight on you. the people you deal with will understand when you're just too busy and need to cut out extra responsibilities. they may be upset, but they'll understand.

do what it takes to make sure you have enough energy and time to do the things that are important to you and to get the information that's important to you. after that, everything else is just a nice bonus ;)

Hmm, well said. Yeah I can really say that this month ( in particular ) is absolutely nuts, besides my OWN work there's like a thousand things happening and for some reason everyone's birthday is this month as well.

This weekend has been great to just unwind and relax and SLEEP- something which I haven't really had in the past few weeks.

I seem to have been running off of just coffee and other sources of caffeines for the past weeks by means of necessity to function. And, while I'm more productive @ work, by the time I finally get home and need to sleep, I really really can't. *sighs* must be some happy medium in there somewhere. Who knows? Again with I wish I didn't have to sleep thing. Think of how much more work I could be getting done- And yes, I haven't touched my google reader for days now.

Solutions? Iignoring IM/IRC/JAIKU/GMAIL is all good things. Less clutter in the brains. But I have problems doing that- I find video gaming (particularly an awesome Guitarhero match), a pot of tea, or a quiet lunch with a friend to be great ways to escape the madness ( if just for a moment :P ) Snuggles also do the trick. To which i can give references to Lyal who is an amazing cuddler.

Too bad we couldn't all just turn off our brains for a few hours, or download the days events/memories into a large cauldron.