Stephanie & I arrived in Atlanta, Georgia over a week ago. A flurry of activity happened – we spoke that night to the Atlanta Trigger Happy photographer group. We visited our friend Julie Anne. We shopped. (We shopped too much.) We saw Robert Redford in Norcross. We ate great food. We went to the Mom 2.0 Summit in Atlanta.
Then Stephanie left on Saturday, and the conference ended on Saturday night, and *BAM*. I was hit with the post conference, the BFF has gone home crash.
Hard.
I have to confess that at the last minute, instead of picking my things up at Julie Anne’s house, where I had left my camping gear behind so it wasn’t sitting in my car in a parking lot, I decided to park myself at her house. Just for a night – at least that was the plan.
Then I didn’t leave yesterday. Instead? I spent another day with Julie Anne, we went out for a delicious lunch to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, and we spent hours just laughing and talking.
Now it is 1pm, and I’m still here. With a 4 hour drive ahead of me to Congaree National Park in South Carolina.
I needed to stay.
I realized today that I do this when I travel. I get stuck in a certain city. I’m surrounded by amazing people who I adore and I want to spend more time with, and I need the recovery time. I am ok with that.
Do you pay attention to when you should just stop for awhile?
How often do we forget to give ourselves permission to just stop? To breathe? To rest? To let ourselves recover before we plow forward in to our next adventure?
Does this mean adjusting my travel schedule somewhat? Yes, it does. But it also means I’m not exhausted anymore. I spent the morning doing work. I answered emails. I uploaded photos. I took care of things that needed to be done. Which, if you ask me, is far more important. Will it mean that I’ll miss things along the way? I’ll have to skip things tomorrow that I might want to do? Yes, it does. But that is ok. For now, I have my strength back, and I’m ready to travel on.
I’m giving you permission to give yourself a break. You need it. You will be refreshed afterwards. Get up, get outside, spend time with friends. Work will still be there waiting.
Christine Tremoulet
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Wow. I’m literally stopping right now. My brain is fried. I have 1000 ideas and none of them will work yet. I’m tired. And have laundry and cleaning, etc. to do. But I’m spending an hour outside with my book right now because if I don’t, I’ll snap!
Absolutly, yes I do, I stay in bed for as long as I can, I get on the couch and watch feel good movies all day, eat cerial for lunch and all while remaining in my pajamas.
Timely post! I just came in front laying down on my back porch with my sweater covering my head and letting sun beat down on me warming me up from head to toe. Dog licked my face to make sure I was OK, yep, I was. That meant that I could play with him in the backyard for awhile, he told me this:) What a great little break:)
Stopped for two days last week. My brain needed it. Lol
Thank you for the “doing work” part. You saved me from a procrastinating mom panic attack.
Difficult and yet so vital!
[…] left my friend Julie’s house after getting stuck in Atlanta (it was pretty eye-opening) with every intention of heading off to Congaree National Park in South […]