Too Stressed To Be Blessed

Are you facing burnout? Performance in the dumps? M I S E R A B L E?

It may be time to take a mental health day peeps. 

Mental health is important. Mental health is important. Mental. Health. Is. Important. 

Now that we got that out of the way; I just wanted let you guys know that mental health is important. 

I'm not sure if it's a culture thing or the proliferation of those "no days off" type motivational quotes over scenic backgrounds (see below), but I do know we're convinced that chronic stress, sleep deprivation, and putting ourselves last is somehow the key to success. Hell, some people even find the 24/7 grind and hustle admirable. I know I used to...but now I see the light *cue heavenly harps*

Lets start with my self. A few months ago, I realized I was sitting on 220+ hours of PTO. That's 27.5 work days.... Imagine the amount of time worked, without really any days off, to build up this PTO cache. It's simply not sustainable - like at all. I was stressed out, tired, miserable and basically felt like work was consuming my entire life. I would come home and have 50 million other things to do and stress over before I could finally slide into bed around 11:30 pm just to wake up and do it all over again. So I made a promise to myself to take off at least 2 consecutive days every month. And with that commitment and follow through, my productivity  soared, I was happier in the office and even able to focus better at home. 

Now these mental health days aren't meant for you to go home and finish painting the guest bedroom, doing laundry, or whatever self-loathing chore you can conjure up (unless you're one of the eleven people who actually get excited about a sink full of dirty dishes) . Basically, do something you want to do and not something you have to do. For instance, some of my mental health days were spent riding around listening to music, letting the pups nap on my lap while I played Xbox, reading, or just laying in bed watching Spongebob and chortling at Doggo memes until noon. Every minute of it was therapeutic. 

(dis)Honorable Mention
Before ending the post I just wanted to give a brief shout out to a sneaky little stressor; sense of control. We all can't be Christian Grey and exercise control in all things. The sooner you accept this, the happier you will be. I see co-workers lose their collective shit daily over systems outages and management changes. Change what is in your control, accept what is not and please please please...learn the difference between the two. 

via GIPHY

From the folks killing themselves everyday to keep to their strict budgets and losing hair obsessing over retirement projections; to the ladies on the corporate ladder rolling out of bed on Sunday morning to go through their inbox just ​to make room for new emails - take a fucking day off. Soon. Think about why you're doing this to yourself and I bet you the 38 cents on my dresser you can't come up with anything that makes sense. Life isn't meant to be business all the time....it'll be over before you know it.