Sometimes, it’s not enough to just rest.
I’ve been working on a really important project at work. It’s one of those things that, when complete, will be revolutionary for my department. Really catapult us into the present in a cool exciting way.
Anyways, because I’ve been working on said project in-between daily/weekly ad hoc requests, committee work, etc. the work has been going kind of slower than I would of liked. As such, I keep the program that I’m using up and running in the background while I work on other things, picking up where I left off as breaks or occasional get aways from my daily tasks.
For the past few weeks I’ve been getting that bothersome pop-up from the software saying “there’s a new update available for you! would you like to close the program and run the update?” to which I promptly click Ignore and go on about my business. Because who had time for updates right?! “down times” are wack.
Today I came to a point in my project where (not to get too deep in the weeds, but) I needed to merge two datasets at different levels of detail into a single visualization and the damn thing was having a fit trying to do it.
I googled it (as all we Millenials do) and found the answer to my problem. It was a new feature in the update of the software. The same update that I had been putting off for a few weeks now. So, if I had just done it back when it first popped up I wouldn’t have spent (or better yet, wasted) the whole afternoon problem solving my issue.
Of course the counselor in me chose to pause this moment and glean an introspective lesson.
And this is what I got.
Read, Rest, Repeat
There are so many times we ignore the obvious signs in our life. Whether it’s a physical signal your body is sending or a message from the universe in a less oblivious way, we tend to keep right on moving through the signs..We tell ourselves that we have to keep on going and moving and whatever the hell that is the God or your silly, human body is telling you can wait for a more convenient time.
And then we wonder why life becomes so tough. Why we have to work so hard to get things done when doing the same.task a while ago took far less effort.
But then, you stop.
Not only do you start practicing more self-care and filling yourself up but you also make time to read and take in information from around you. At this point, you’ve essentially paused life for a moment to gather more data and become more informed (rejuvenating your mind) and all the while you’re also catching up on your rest (rejuvenating yourself physically).
You’re resetting yourself… much like you would a computer after loading software updates.
And now, you are able to function at a high level again. Your tasks become easier and more enjoyable. Life is much more manageable. All because you’re now caught up on all your updates. All because you’ve hit the Control Atl Delete.