On being ill and realising you haven’t stopped since SF3

I had a day off yesterday (Thursday), mainly because I was ill and I couldn’t do much else, so I laid around in bed and slept for half the day and binge-watched old episodes (which I haven’t seen!) of ‘Silent Witness’ on iPlayer and new episodes of Ricky Gervais’ ‘After Life’ on Netflix.

I’d initially put my tiredness on Wednesday morning down my pretty intense interval session the day before, but was feeling unusually bloated after breakfast and coffee and cake, not at all hungry at lunch (trust me, that is unusual), which I skipped, and by the evening I was feeling ‘ill’ enough to head out and get some stomach settlers, a lemon and some ginger from the supermarket, and a melon, as you do. I went to bed early Wednesday and skipped dinner, I just wasn’t’ feeling hungry, which, trust me again, is very unusual.

I then spent all of Wednesday night and Thursday morning feeling full, as if my stomach hadn’t digested any of the food I’d eaten Wednesday a.m, and taking the occasional trip to the toilet to push out about a third of a pint (roughly, hard to estimate) of liquid shit at a time, while still feeling bloated, making repeated trips every 2-3 hours, alternating cups of green tea and lemon/ginger/ honey, with the occasional glass of own-brand Alka-Seltzer downed.

I skipped breakfast Thursday, but thankfully by lunch my stomach was feeling a little better so I ate the melon at about 14.00, meaning I’d effectively fasted for 27 hours, followed by a veggie curry with a whole Naan bread at about 18.00.

Now (Friday) I’ve got a slight post-illness feeling but I pretty much feel normal. Funny sort of stomach-bug. I feel like I can go and bash out a hilly interval session on the treadmill in an hour or so.

On realising you haven’t stopped since SF3

The thing about being ill is that it forces you stop and just laze around – I slept A LOT the last couple of days, did NOT a lot, and realised that I haven’t had a proper day off since I got back from SF3 – in fact work has intensified massively in last couple of months.

Oddly I’d actually planned a day off on Thursday (yesterday), not so much a day off as a day just to offline and catch up with tidying the house (I’ve still got to get used to ‘house’ rather than ‘flat’!), which is a bit of a mess, but I spent it being ill instead.

I guess this is the thing about working for yourself – you just end up working longer hours than if you work for someone else!

Not that I planned it like this, and not that I’m complaining, I quite like being busy with blogging and even teacher-training more recently… primary goal no #01 is still financial independence and early retirement after all, and that’s working out reasonably well. Primary goal #01 isn’t to sit around my arse and chillax.

However, having said that, I’m going to make sure I take a bit more time off late April (bit of a mental couple of weeks coming up first) much more time to meditate and tidy up after myself, and maybe even bake some muffins.

I somehow used to find the time to do all three of those when I worked for ‘the man’, but now I am ‘the man’ I do less of them.

Spring proper will be the perfect time to change that!