Yule Recovery Time!

[nonesensed]

I'm finally truly slowing down here at the end of the year. We've got seven days left of 2025 and I hope everyone is having a good end of the year. I certainly am! Vacation is here at last and I can recover from all the things I've put myself through since January 😅

Yeah, this did not end up being the self-care year I had planned. At all. In fact, I've not worked this much overtime since I had my old, shitty job that gave me actual burnout. Wheee. Everything that could go wrong at work definitely did, this year (in ways that no one could help).

Will absolutely aim to take things slow for a long while and to NOT do this to myself again. My loudest wake-up call was now in December when two massages therapists, independent of each other, made the O_O-face when assessing me. Going to take a while to recover but it is doable. I just need plenty of rest.

BUT! I still managed to write 50k words on one of my book projects during November and I finished my Yuletide fic in time, so all is not terrible by any means of the word. And I have plenty of personal plans for next year, to prevent myself from taking on too much work or "work" (+ I've had everyone who would be "picking up my slack" agree to not overwork themselves either, which is the biggest win of this year for me!)🩵🩵🩵

Speaking of Yuletide, I got this wonderful Bioshock Infinite fic 💖Highly recommended!

Comments

[flamingsword]

I have been having a lot of luck with my list of 20 self care things and a dice rolling app, both helpfully located on my phone. I don’t get bored of doing self care things and I have an alarm to tell me to do the thing. Easy! Well … easier than trying to do it by memory, anyway.

I’m sure the internet has other good ideas for such things.

[nonesensed]

I'm glad you've found a method that works for you! My sister has a similar way of keeping track of cleaning, self-care, and such things.

My problem isn't that I forget to do self-care, it's that I simply haven't had the time. When you work 7am to 8-9pm and have a two hour commute, there's not much time to cook healthy food, exercise and get enough sleep 😅 But the future is looking bright on that front! Everyone who's been off on sick leave is back and I've sworn everyone else who's worked insane amounts of overtime to a pact of us not doing that in 2026. And my LARP group has also acknowledge that I and like 3 other people have been DOING ALL THE WORK for the past few years, so I and said 3 others are off the hook for doing any work for our upcoming LARP. So in 2026 I will aim to be "selfish" and not overwork myself.

I'm currently living the high life, visiting my parents and sister: sleeping up to 9 hours a night, eating good, resting plenty, going on daily walks with the neighbor's dog, doing physiotherapy and catching up on all the hobbies I've had to neglect. I already feel a 100% better 😊

[flamingsword]

Woo! Yay for the high life!

Also, as my therapist once said to me, if you are reflexively defining as “selfish” anything other than putting your wants before others needs, then maybe think about why that is: who taught it to you, who benefits from it, and who is paying for it. It was an eye-opener for me, for sure, to start seeing all the ways I was abandoning myself in order to comply with stuff taught to me by a father figure I no longer even talk to.

[nonesensed]

Also, as my therapist once said to me, if you are reflexively defining as “selfish” anything other than putting your wants before others needs, then maybe think about why that is: who taught it to you, who benefits from it, and who is paying for it.

Oh yeah, that's why I put selfish in "sarcasm-quotes". I definitely don't think I'm being selfish to expect normal working conditions at my job and equal workloads in my LARP group! The only reason I've been overworking at work is because I had to, or my workplace wouldn't exist today (and I do like my job in "normal mode" and would hate to go looking for another). As for my LARP group, I ended up overworking there because I knew if I didn't it would all fall on the other three people with a sense of responsibility - in the last 2 years everyone else in the group has suddenly been doing less and less.

I've been a member for over ten years so I can see (and feel) the stark difference between now and when I started in the group; you better believe I've been vocal about more people needing to step up! But my main goal there has been to get the other people overworking themselves to agree to not do that. Either people take on an equal workload or we let it crash and burn - the only thing I'd feel guilty about is if I too left the "core group" to overwork themselves.

Therapy can be such a wonderful help! I'm glad you found a good therapist to work with 💙💙💙

[potentiality_26]

Yeah, this did not end up being the self-care year I had planned. Too real.

Congrats for all the writing you did!

[nonesensed]

2025 definitely was not the ideal year for self-care; let's hope 2026 works out better!

Thank you for the congrats 💖 I've figured out a new outlining style I'm looking forward to trying out on my longer WIPs really soon 💜

[potentiality_26]

Here's hoping!

So great if you've found a style that's working for you! I'm still a bit all over the place.

[nonesensed]

Hope springs eternal!

Best of luck with finding your own writing style - and that you have fun discovering it 😊 And soon to be Happy New Year! 💖💖💖

[scintilla10]

Hurrah for vacation! ♥ And yay on all your writing productivity this year!

Awesome that you have plans to take things slow, and prevent burn-out and overwork for yourself for the coming year - that sounds like it was hard.

[nonesensed]

Thank you 💖💖💖 Vacation and writing are delightful things!

My only resolution for 2026 is to Have A Chill Year~ Hope you have a Happy New Year as well 💜💜💜