Some days are physically exhausting, while other days are mentally exhausting. This doesn’t even include days that are emotionally exhausting. If you get all three days in a row, you are just plain fucked. I haven’t had all three in about a week. Today was mentally and emotionally exhausting. I love puzzles, and I love to figure shit out, but there are some puzzles that just melt my brain straight out my ears. Problems I would normally solve easily were painstakingly difficult. WTF? On top of all that, it was an emotionally charged day, almost from the start. By noon, I was smoked. I had to take a lunch break at 1:00PM just to give my brain time to at least turn back into jelly before returning to my pain-in-the-ass problems.
When you put an emotionally-exhausting day on top of a mentally-exhausting day, watch out! It could turn into a sobbing rage fest of incoherent babbles that make no sense. No one wants that! Some people are better at recognizing it better than others. Me? I suck at it, when it comes to myself. Luckily, someone was watching out for me today and forced me to take a time out. The difference between a toddler and myself, other than the apparent size difference and my gray hair, is that I have the mental awareness to not throw a temper tantrum and to ask why am I going to time out.
The answer is simple: when I get too focused on other people and other tasks, I neglect myself. People who care about you are supposed to stop you from going too far and hurting yourself mentally, physically, and/or emotionally. Since moving out of my parent’s house at 19, I never really had anyone to do that. I’d run myself ragged, on the verge of collapse, trying to appease everyone, and eventually crash. I never took vacations or time off. Even vacations were work, either because I took vacation to work on the house, or no one wanted to put the time into helping on actual vacations. I was always taking care of something or someone. It’s weird, yet comforting that someone actually wants to make sure I don’t burn out and go down in a ball of fire. I kinda like it.