When the Body Says No

Overwork crept up on my slowly.

Work has always felt busy to me, but over the past six months, the intensity has been increasing.  An extra patient or two added to each clinic.  A new computer system that is supposed to, but doesn't, make things easier.  An extra trainee to supervise each week.  Nothing particularly time-consuming on its own, but the cumulative effect has been a few extra hours of work every week.

At the same time, life outside of work has become busier.  I've invested a lot of energy into meeting people, and my social circle has expanded.  And on New Year's Day, I met my new girlfriend!  And I've started doing yoga.  And while all of these things are good (some of them really good), they all take time.

I started to notice the effects of being too busy right before my Christmas break.  At the end of yoga class, lying in shavasana (aka "corpse pose"), I'd often fall asleep.  On a particularly bad day, I'd cry.  I thought that I just needed a good break, but I felt just as tired and overwhelmed after my 10-day break as I had before.  The same thing was true when I returned from a recent week of vacation in Mexico.

The lowest point came the first week back from Mexico.  I was in the middle of my usual Thursday paperwork day when I started having an anxiety attack.  I couldn't focus on anything I was supposed to do, and all I could think about was how I could never possibly get done everything I needed to do.  I ended up having to leave early, because I was just desperately spinning my wheels while accomplishing absolutely nothing.

That night, I took a long and serious look at what had gotten me to that place.  (Also a long and serious look at my bank balance.  If it had been high enough for FIRE, that might have been the moment for me.  But alas, it's not even close.)  And I realized that I haven't done anything to protect my time and energy, even though I know that I am someone who gets (relatively) easily overwhelmed.

So my new phrase is "fuck no".  (The "fuck" part said inside my head, because of the aforementioned lack of enough money to retire.)  I have put an absolute moratorium on saying yes to anything else, and I've been getting rid of any commitment that I can possibly get rid of.  I've put a firm cap on my clinics, and when people say "Can't you just squeeze in one more patient?", the answer is "Noooooo".

Better to pare back now, when I'm not totally burnt out, than to be forced to do it when I am.

(I have so much more to say about this, but I'm exhausted.  Hopefully soon!)