I like to think I’m pretty good at self-care, but I’ve come to realise I’m actually pretty terrible at it. Despite writing about it, learning about it and reading countless articles about it, I am still not quite able to get the hang of it.
I seem to get mixed up between what I should be doing, what I want to do and self-care. They all seem to cling together in my mind and become this big ball of scariness that I end up ignoring, much to my detriment.
Honestly, I’m not sure when the last time I indulged in a bit of self-care was! Apart from the daily listen to music, but that’s more of a necessity rather than self-care. I do find myself relaxing and watching one of my favourite YouTubers stream on Twitch, or the odd episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, however I tell myself this is not self-care – this is laziness, and this is where my problem lay.
It’s like I have this tiny version of myself on my shoulder that screams at me daily, “WHY ARE YOU WASING TIME? WHY AREN’T YOU WORKING? YOU’RE SO LAZY! OH MY GOD!” I wish she would just shut up.
Watching the TV has become what feels like a shameful experience for me, because I’m always telling myself I should be doing something. Whether that be housework, jotting down some ideas for a blog post, or brainstorming some more creative writing; it’s all something I should be doing, but really, some days they’re the last things I want to do.
Even when I’m at my day job, I am constantly telling myself I’m wasting time because I “should be using this time to think creatively.” I’m not sure when I became this strange creative monster!
Writing has always been a pleasure for me, and often my form of self-care, but over the last year I have relied on it so much that it’s become all I’ve known. I used my writing as a way to escape my day-to-day, and although I have loved every second of my creativity, it really is exhausting being switched on to it every minute, of every day.
It’s like being wired into a TV screen and some else is switching the channels every second. I can’t settle into any of it, and I have no idea what’s going on!
Recently I’ve come to realise, with my lack of self-care and my 24/7 creativity, I’ve actually reached a strange point of burn out. Which feels so wrong to say, because how can something you love contribute to burn out? But even too much of a good thing can be too much. Which means I need to take a break.
To think about my own world, instead of a fictional world, and look at the people around me rather than characters. It’s time to experience the real world for a little bit, as crap as it may be sometimes.
And so far so good, I’m a few days into my ‘creative holiday’ and my mind feels a lot less like a TV and much more peaceful. I mean, its still chaos don’t get me wrong, but a more chilled kind of chaos; a chaos I can cope with.
I can’t help but think a break from my characters and some time on me, will be beneficial to both myself and my creativity. It is time for me to drop my bags of guilt on the floor and walk away from them, and time to pack my characters away into their book shaped box to relax for a little while, ready for them to leap back out and begin to scream at me about what I need to write about next.
And at least if I have my break, (and figure out some self-care) I’ll have the capacity to be able to write about what they shout at me.
Breaks are good; they are helpful, and they are necessary. And maybe breaks are a form of self-care in themselves.
…maybe I do have the hang of self-care after all.
Gwen Richards 