You and I Are Too Old to Ignore When We're Exhausted...and Call Time Out as Needed

Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

Photo by brut carniollus on Unsplash

Our productivity hack culture can mean so much of our identity is tied up in doing and achieving…

…that at times we don’t even recognize exhaustion when it’s already set in.

Certainly not for all, but for far too many. Millennials seemed to embrace the productivity hack notion even more than Boomers did. My folks, the so-called Great Generation, were all about work ‘til you drop, and then you die.

Growing up on a farm, all I knew was work. At 71 I still have a terrible time taking time out, time off, time to recover. I feel guilty.

My friend Melissa went back to work for the Federal Government last year at the age of 65. She’s a one-off and a subject matter expert (SME). She was deeply grateful for the income and for being able to pay into her Social Security, as inflation has hit her like it has all of us.

Yet lately…people on her team have become irritable and overworked, she’s been carrying way too much not only for herself but also for them, and she’d finally had it.

With Juneteenth a Federal holiday, she decided to take today AND tomorrow and give herself four days. So yesterday, she did all kinds of running around, taking advantage of the extra time. By midday she was exhausted even more.

I heard it in her voice.

Calling it out is very powerful. What she told me- and I challenge you to ask this of yourself- is

“I had no idea just how tired I was until I took the day off and ended up even more tired by midday on an off day,” she said.

That hit home.

Perhaps even more importantly, a senior boss asked her to meet with him today. Her second day off.

She said no.

It wasn’t equivocal.

I love that.

Can we do that for ourselves? Can we just say no, call a time out? For us?

I’ve been known to work twelve-hour days, seven days a week, for months on end. Nobody at the end of that particular assembly line is there to knight me at the end of the day, the week-month-year, my life.

If we’re our own bosses, can we drop the productivity hacks and take a walk around our insides for a moment to find out just how mentally, spiritually, emotionally, physically exhausted we may be?

I’ll bet mothers of a Certain Age and more will relate to this story:

Years ago when I was traveling in New Zealand with my mother by camper van, I developed some horrible pains in my girl parts. I had surgery for cysts, and found myself in a hospital room in a suburb of a lovely South Island city.

I shared the room with two other women. One, a mother, never left her bed. She look haggard, slept a great deal,. As I was to learn from her, she hadn’t had surgery.

She was there because she was desperate for rest.

Every day during visiting hours her entire family, led by the father, would descend on her like feeding locusts and demand that she hurry up and come home.

They were tired of having to cook, clean, do laundry.

They wanted Mommy back.

Mommy didn’t want to go back home.

Made me think of this:

I have fed the internal monsters which demand that I constantly prove my worth by working until I fall over. Taking time off for me feels like a crime, something Melissa and I discuss, laugh at and continue to deal with as the compulsion to DO instead of simply to BE is pervasive in this culture.

I’ve got a five-foot Buddha statue in my dining room which silently exhorts me to SLOW THE HELL DOWN as I rush by doing doing doing doing DOING.

Wellness hacks simply add more DO-ing without the benefit of feeling as though we have really addressed the exhaustion. Read

Ryan Delaney

.

Cramming another yoga class into an already brutal schedule isn’t self-care. It’s abusive. Because when the yoga or the workouts or the bubble baths or the expensive creams don’t work, we feel like failures.

When I think of that mother, and any single mom today or any parent period, I think about exhaustion.

At what point do we take the time to find out why we’re so crabby, short-tempered, insistent, tend to catastrophize (I am addressing myself here) and ask, where on EARTH is this coming from?

Exhaustion, perhaps?

This led to my asking about where that exhaustion comes from, and whether or not there are sources we can shut down to protect ourselves.

Of course there are.

First, while I suspect you already know this, please refer to this Guardian article about the addictive power of being online.

The view of the Rogue River from my campground, guide’s camp to the left (what a view!)

Then this:

For five blessed days I took a trip on the Rogue River. That adventure, like most of my trips, allowed me to put my phone to bed and use it solely for a few photos. Otherwise it lived in plastic and shut the hell up.

It was bliss.

I’ll be writing more about this later but just know that the return to real silence, punctuated primarily by the sounds of water and raptors and birds, was pure bliss.

So much so that when I finally got back to signal, I let the phone stay quiet. Since then I’ve been monitoring what I watch. What I attend. What exhausts me when I read it, see it, hear it, allow it into my life.

I didn’t want to slowly step back into the teeming, angry soup that is social media and our daily lives driven by so much noise.

When

Erik Hogan

heads out to photograph the wild, he is balancing all the other demands of his life. The challenges of the wild offer him a way to put life in perspective, just as it does me.

Media doesn’t soothe.

It sucks the life right out of us.

Lately I’ve shifted to classical music while driving.

Having been brought up on classical, this switch appeals immensely. When I want my car to be full of something, let it be melodic.

Hell, my car is already full of coastal sand, dog slobber, dog hair and a slew of bottles and supplies, a little melody would be welcomed.

There is only so much news I can ingest, and only so much about politics I am willing to allow into my day. I know how I’m going to vote.

The more I curate what I ingest via the Internet and social media (including Substack, which can also get too angry) the better I feel. I’m done being pummelled with information about what I can’t control. Being compared to people whose lives are fake and their beauty airbrushed.

I don’t mind that I look like I stuck my finger into a live electrical outlet.

To wrap that point, please see this Forbes article about what happens to us when we overuse social media and what we can do about it.

Nothing you don’t already know or at least suspect.

We are so often so exhausted that it’s normalized. Like Melissa, and I’ve done it too, we didn’t have a clue just how tired we were until we got off the gerbil wheel.

Finally, I got this comment and have permission to share it. This really hit home for me and I’ll bet many can relate:

Sarrah B.

Living for Wellness

For someone who has currently been kicking themselves mentally for the last few weeks for not writing or doing the things I know I should be doing, like writing or working out more.

…sometimes life happens. It hit me that the reason I’ve not done those things is the job that has me doing 10+ hour days currently. The extra call ins. The 2 hour commute there and back.

The days filled with doctor appointments to figure out and finish things related to my health that I have been struggling with. Among other sudden responsibilities.

Sometimes finding kindness for yourself is needed…

Hopefully life will calm down for me soon and I’ll be able to do more. Until then I’ll keep trying to do what I can when I can.

Life won’t calm down unless we actively calm it down in those areas where we have direct agency.

One of them is social media. Another is saying YES all the time to sh*t that we shouldn’t. Another is giving too many f**ks about stuff that in the real sense DOES NOT REALLY MATTER.

For help with that, please see

Sarah Knight

and her work.

When we stop investing our limited supply of f**ks in things that are meaningless (OHMIGOD YOU COULD SEE KIM KARDASHIANS NIPPLES) my guess is that the exhaustion, anxiety, anger, depression and all the rest will lighten.

Maybe not dissipate, but most assuredly will lighten.

You may still have a bum knee, a demanding mother and not enough money to travel. Yet. Ask

Kristi Keller

.

You may still have a child or four, a grandkid or two, a household of people who can’t find work and can’t help you with the mortgage.

You may still have a partner with a terrible disease.

I see you. Melissa and I have buckets full of First World issues as well. But we can all, to some extent, just say no to certain things which are not in our best interest.

Even if all we can say is no right now.

Because space in the day to breathe, space in our minds to think, space in our hearts to be grateful all slow us down.

Mika, at six months, working her way to the pillows

That’s one reason I got a puppy. She invites me to make space in my day for pure unconditional love. You can ask Kristi about that one too, or

Tom Cox

about how the regular walks, time with cats and observing nature skew us towards true wellness.

Feeling exhausted? Is it time to tell your boss (you) that you’re taking a four-day weekend and NO you’re not having a meeting tomorrow?

Instead, you’re going to (fill in the blank with something you love) for a few days. And maybe, not look at your phone or the computer for much of that time.

If you wait until things calm down you’ll likely wait a long time.

Let’s find a way to play more now.

Photo by Komang Gita Krishna Murti on Unsplash

Thanks for reading my work. I hope you got some ideas and inspiration. Thanks to all the good writers who inform my work as well. If this was of value to you please consider

If you know someone who might need reminding that there is a calmer way to live please also consider

Either way, to the best you can, carve out time for you.