Tag Archives: rest

Shorter Work Weeks

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I loved having a 4 day weekend. It is long enough to make me question the 5 day work week. Who came up with that? And why do we still have them?

I don’t need regular 4 day weekends, but I’d love regular 3 day weekends, then add one more day on holidays.

Who else is ready to reexamine the work week? And while we are at it, I’m pretty sure student’s wouldn’t mind that schedule either. Maybe on average students wouldn’t miss as much school, and just as much work would get done.

It won’t happen before my career is over, but I hope that a 4 day maximum work week is something my kids get to enjoy.

Getting Rest

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It’s not always easy getting enough sleep. Sometimes, no matter how much I try, I feel like I’m not recharging my battery. I’m in bed early, and I wake up many times during the night. Or I actually get to sleep early and get a good night of rest one evening and then my body won’t let me sleep the next night.

Sleep doesn’t seem to accumulate as easily as lack of sleep. I can get a nice recharge from a few good nights in a row, but one bad night undermines that pattern and puts me in a deficit again.

I’m currently on a challenging cycle and it’s making my regular routine difficult, and exhausting. I’ve got to reset a positive sleep pattern, but if I’m honest… I’m off to a crappy start.

Afternoon rest

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Well, I just flaked out for a couple hours. Thought I was going to head out grocery shopping and haven’t made it out yet. But today is the last day of the winter break and I’m grateful to be able to give myself some down time. My next 3 weeks are jam packed and so if I want to take a little afternoon nap today… well permission granted. 😀

My evening will include a bit of meal prep, and a bit of listening to my audio book. And an early bed time. Tomorrow will be a full day, in high gear, and the pace won’t stop. But today, I savour the quiet time, and enjoy the slower pace. That said, it’s time to get off the couch.

My focus on school begins tomorrow, and that will probably reflect in the topics I choose to write about. Afternoon naps will not be the topic of conversation in the coming days!

Recovery mode

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The semester is over and the holidays have begun. Got my walk in with my buddy this morning and then came home and slept for almost 3 hours. I don’t usually take 3 hour naps, but I guess my body needed it. I’m just glad I didn’t have a full crash and get sick, which often happens this time of year.

But I’m older and a bit wiser. I didn’t let my almost 60 hour work week stop me from my healthy living routines. I didn’t skip meals because I was too busy. I didn’t miss taking my vitamins. And I still talked regularly to friends. So many times in the past I would get busy and just drop my positive routines.

That said, rest is also an important routine and while long naps are not part of my routine, letting myself crash for a bit and recover today has me feeling great as I begin the holidays.

The long road

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Last night I got home after 8 pm. Today will be my early day home around 5:30. Wednesday I’ll get home after 8pm, and Thursday will be 10pm if I’m lucky.

While many people are counting the days until Christmas, I’m just looking forward to the end of the week. Some of the events keeping me late are fun for me, one (a dance) is great for the students. I am happy to participate in these events, but I can honestly say that I’m tired already, and it’s only Tuesday morning.

It’s weeks like this that I feel my age. I realize that younger me would have skipped through this week like it was a minor blip. Yesterday I got home and did absolutely nothing until falling asleep on the couch around 9:30. I went to bed soon after and my alarm woke me up just like it has for the past two weeks… whereas for the two weeks before that, I probably only heard it 2 or maybe 3 times, with me waking up before my alarm most days.

It’s Tuesday morning and I see a very long road ahead of me to get me to the holidays. I need to psych myself up to stay strong, and get my sleep in too. Because so often in my career I reach the first weekend of a break and I get sick. My body stays strong to make it through this final week of school and then when I can finally relax my physical health crashes. I’m determined for this to not happen (ever again). It really sucks when I finally get a break and my body ‘lets go’.

I’ll take my vitamins, maintain my healthy habits, get a lot of sleep, and slowly travel this long road to the holidays.

Hard to let go

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I had a very long and busy week last week, and that flowed into a long and busy weekend. I ended up with an empty tank, both physically and emotionally. I woke up Monday morning feeling awful and took the day off. My back ached, I felt like crap and I slept most of the day.

What I didn’t do was check my emails. I legitimately took a day off. Usually that means working from home, but I didn’t even open my laptop yesterday, and my phone stayed on ‘Do Not Disturb’. This morning I continued to feel bad and so I ended up taking a second day off (rare beyond a full back spasm or bad cold). Again, I stayed away from work much of the day, but I did put in a couple hours this morning to get some important communication out that was promised. And throughout the day I had a few things pull me into work mode via Teams and text messages.

And so I just looked at my email and I have 133 unread messages. That would have been higher without what I did today. This is the challenge of taking sick time… the work still comes your way. It’s like you take a sick day only when you absolutely need it, then you come back to so much work that you feel punished for taking care of yourself.

I’ve been working on this, trying to find balance. I will stay later at work and not look at email when I get home. I will add things to my ‘to do’ list at the end of the day and actually get home in time to make dinner. I will prioritize Teams, where my staff connect with me first and not look at email to start the day.

Still, it’s hard to let go. It’s hard to not sneak work in when I’m home. It’s hard to think, ‘I can deal with this tomorrow.’ But this morning I could feel it in me, ‘Take the day today and you won’t need another one before Christmas break… go back too soon and your battery is going to drain again, you aren’t healthy enough.’

So I did the unusual thing and listened to my own advice. Usually I don’t let go, I push through. I’m realizing that’s not just hard on my physical health but my mental health as well.

Do I have a lot of emails to get through? Yes. Does that add to my stress? Yes. But tomorrow I’ll attend to people first and email later… and I’ll catch up. The important thing is that I gave my body and mind the rest it needed and I’m 95% sure I’ll be back at work tomorrow.

A rest day

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One of the best parts of getting older is that unlike when I was half my age, I actually listen to my body. Four days ago I did my Norwegian Protocol cardio workout and really pushed hard. I also did a bicep workout. Three days ago I did a hard incline walk with a 34lb weighted vest. Then I did pull-ups and step ups with the vest still on.

Two days ago I did a really challenging leg workout out then had some knee aches through the day. Yesterday I did a light 20 minute stationary bike ride to get the blood flow to my legs and hopefully reduce the lactic acid buildup from the leg workout. Then I did a hard chest workout.

Today I know I need a break. Sure I spread out my workouts and don’t overdo any one area, except maybe going a bit too hard on legs. Sure I have areas like my back or abs that I could focus on today while giving my other muscles a rest. But I can tell I need a rest day… my body is telling me so.

Younger me would have felt guilty taking the day off. Younger me would have pushed through, not realizing that my very healthy knees almost never bother me and maybe a rest day is in order. Younger me would probably have worked out today and dealt with any pain as a result, as if it’s nothing to worry about, until it was too painful to continue.

But not today. Today I rest. It’s a wonderful rest day! And I’ll be back at it tomorrow.

Power naps

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I love power naps. Give me 20-40 minutes of quiet or soft non-lyrical music and a flat surface and I can nap just about anywhere. But quiet is a luxury, I could even nap on a pool bench with multiple Fox-40 whistles being blown as a water polo game is in progress.

Just give me a power nap and I’ll be back fresher than ever. But extend my rest time past 40 minutes and the power part of the power nap is inversely affected. Then I feel groggy for the rest of the day. Then I stay up too late and have another low power day on the horizon.

So while a quiet space might be a minor concern for me and my naps, either a timer or alarm is an essential. I’ve got to keep that time in check, then I’m returning from my nap fully charged.

The Crash

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So often when a break in the school year comes my body crashes. Often I end up sick with a cold, because I’m too busy to let myself get sick, then the lull comes and my body lets go. Luckily that didn’t happen to end the year. But yesterday I was doing a leg workout and on my second goblet squat my right knee did a little buckle and I twinged a muscle in my mid back.

This morning I took a deep breath in and my back seized. It’s a brutal recognition of my age when breathing can be the trigger to pain. It has been several years since I’ve had a crash this bad, my whole back has seized to protect this one overstressed muscle.

The stress of the last 3 months got to me and now I’ve got to take it really easy. My Norwegian Protocol won’t happen on this Sunday, I’ll have to make it up next week. Today I stretch, hot tub, stretch, and rest. And hopefully my recovery is swift. I didn’t get sick, but my body still crashed.

Extra down time

It’s Sunday night and tomorrow is a holiday. I will be doing pushups for a monthly challenge, and meditating before bed, but I will be skipping my cardio workout today. No guilt, I’ve worked out every day since my last workout missed on January 27th, and I’m not up to getting my heart rate up before bed.

I feel like the Sunday of a long weekend is a very special kind of down time. A day like today was spent being productive, doing things that I like to do but seldom have time. I also got laundry done and it didn’t feel like a chore. I also just finished watching a couple episodes of a show my wife and I have been watching together.

…And I still have another whole day off! It seems like every long weekend I’ve been writing about how much I value 3 days off. It makes me wonder if we will ever see a shift away from the traditional Monday to Friday work week?

Even if it does change, education will probably be a last bastion of the 5-day week. Until it’s normal for everyone, kids need supervision during the work day. So from now until I retire you can expect a little social commentary on the joys of a three day weekend almost every time they come up.