As I write this, it’s currently Thursday afternoon. I got a fairly decent night’s sleep last night. I’ve already had a half a pot of coffee, and I’m working my way through the second half. I should be invigorated, mentally sharp, and, after all that coffee, a little jittery.

But I’m so tired.

Why?

I’m bad with down time. I’ve struggled taking days off to relax and unwind for most of my adult life, even though I’m aware that I need to give mind and body a break to avoid burning out.

And yet, I burn myself out at least once a year.

I get overwhelmed by the amount of my responsibilities and obligations, most of which are work-related. The excessive amount of stress means I eventually stop getting enough sleep. Once I stop sleeping, I just sort of zombie-shamble my way through each day, anxiously awaiting the next day where I can take a break and recharge.

Only, when that day finally comes, I can’t relax. I don’t unwind. I don’t feel better when I resume my regular work schedule

In fact, am just as exhausted and drained as I was before I had any down time.

Why?

When I finally get a day off, my brain won’t let me rest.

Take this weekend, for example. I love football. I love watching football. Doesn’t matter who is playing. It doesn’t matter that we’re still only in pre-season and most of the games are just players trying to make their team's 53-man roster. I always try to schedule Sunday as a day off, a day during which I can relax and watch my favorite sport.

I started Sunday completely engaged in the first game of the day, enjoying my viewing experience, despite half-filled stadiums and watching mostly second and third-string players.

It’s still football, and I still love it.

But by the second half, my brain began tugging at me.

“Hey, you should be working.”

“Hey, you could be getting a jump on researching that grant you have to write.”

“You know, you still have a stack of unread books on your shelf. Why did you spend the money on them if they’re just going to sit there unread? But don’t spend too much time reading, because that’s not time spent being productive.”

“You should be working on your novel. You’re never going to be a successful author if you don’t finish it, which you could be doing right now!

“Hey, don’t ignore me! Get to work, you fat waste of space!”

“Hey, PRODUCE!”

“Hey…”

Well, I’m sure you get the idea.

What’s just as bad as that screaming voice in my head – who inexplicably sounds like Matt Damon in The Departed (you’d think it would sound like R. Lee Ermey from Full Metal Jacket) – is that it’s become so common place, I don’t recognize it as being anomalous or wrong.

I simply try to do what it says to make it shut up.

That’s healthy…right?

Of course, the answer is “no.”

So why can’t I use the time I’ve scheduled to take a much-needed break?

We live in a society that often measures our worth by how productive we are. It’s become ingrained in us as part of the modern day workforce. It happens at such an early age, we don’t even realize it.

If we don’t produce, we’re given labels like “lazy,” “unmotivated,” “failure,” and “fat sack of crap I wouldn’t be caught dead with, so stop texting me you loser!”

And no one wants that.

In my case, my parents both have tremendous work ethics. I have many childhood memories of things like my mom (a middle school English teacher for 31 years) bringing stacks of essays and student writing with her to my soccer and little league baseball games because that was the only available time she had to do her grading.

At one point, she was the English department chair at her school, the faculty advisor for student government, and was working toward becoming a National Board Certified Teacher, the coursework for which was equivalent to a master’s degree program. She was also a cantor at church, sometimes singing up to three masses a weekend.

Oh, and she was a full-time mom with one kid (me) doing sports year-round, and another kid (my sister) who was singing in a choir with practices two days a week and often with performances on weekends.

Where my mom found time to sleep, I’ll never know.

My dad is a music teacher and Jazz musician. He went back to college in his mid-forties to get his teaching credential while working an absolutely miserable retail job at the time.

He also traveled on weekends to play with various bands all across the western half of the country. And when he wasn’t working or performing, he was practicing. Always practicing. Always putting in the work to maintain his chops and learn new music for upcoming gigs.

I distinctly remember him dropping me off at school one morning, on his way to a full workday with an evening class on top of that. He looked like he was about fall asleep at the wheel.

“You ok, dad?” I asked.

“Yeah, just tired,” he said. He yawned and looked over at me. “Do yourself a favor. Get through school and start your career while you’re still young. Trying to do it when you’re my age is brutal.”

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate my dad’s advice more and more.

Yet, the lesson that was always the most reinforced when I was growing up was “work hard.”

“Hard work pays off,” said a poster in my school’s library.

“Hard work beats talent any day,” said a poster in my high school’s gym.

“The road to your dreams is paved with hard work,” said a sticker on the wall of my sophomore year’s English teacher’s classroom.

Not to mention all the speeches about hard work from every coach I’ve ever had.

All of these motivational slogans and posters emphasized the value of busting one’s ass in order to earn or achieve.

They’re not wrong. Rarely is anything just handed to us. And the things handed to us often aren’t as good as the things we work for, nor do we appreciate them as much.

Moreover, working toward a goal that you one day achieve is immensely satisfying.

The work ethic instilled in me by my parents (which had previously been instilled in them by their parents) has largely served me well. I’m grateful to my parents for showing me the value of hard work. That work ethic helped me excel in sports. It carried me all the way through college and grad school. Most significantly, it propelled me through physical rehab and occupational therapy required to learn how to live life after a traumatic spinal cord injury.

I thought two-a-day football practices in the late-August heat were brutal. They’re a short walk to the donut shop compared to physical rehab.

But what’s often left out of the equation is the need to take a break. That downtime is a required element in achieving whatever it is you’re working toward. That our minds and bodies can only work at maximum output for so long before we exhaust them and they shut down. That, in order to be our most productive and do our best work, we need to take care of ourselves.

The idea of self-care is a something I learned about during my last semester of grad school.

When I first heard about it, I was skeptical – mostly because it was something that was diametrically opposed to the “work your ass off” philosophy that’s been hardwired into me.

However, it was something my body kept telling me I needed.

At the end of every semester, I would come home, and for about a week, have zero energy. I couldn’t think straight, which, after final exams and term papers had liquefied my brain, made sense. I didn’t want to spend time with the family and friends I’d been away from for four straight months. I just wanted to sleep and stare blankly at my TV.

What’s more, for the last seven or eight years, once I do start to slow down and relax, I get sick, usually during that week between Christmas and New Year’s. I don’t remember the last time I watched the ball drop at midnight. I’m usually in bed by 10pm, spooning a box of tissues, or, let’s be real, a roll of toilet paper because I ran out of actual tissues and didn’t feel up to going out and getting more.

Despite even that, my brain, struggling to congeal back to its usual consistency, would start pestering me.

“Hey, now that you have a break, you should really get back to work on that novel you started writing in 2006. You want to be a writer, right? Write, asshole!”

Ugh, it never ends.

So, as I’m sitting in front of the TV on my lone day off for the week, trying to enjoy a football game, I feel guilty because I’m not working.

I feel guilty despite having worked all week.

I feel guilty despite knowing that that’s the time I set aside to rest and recover so I don’t burn out.

It’s the down time I need. It’s the time off I’ve earned. I should enjoy it.

From here on out, I will endeavor to take full advantage of my time off.

But will I actually do so?

I hope so. But I can’t say for certain.

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