Giving myself a break

I spent the weekend being incredibly self-indulgent. I wrote. And I wrote. And I wrote.

I did not do chores. I did not weed my garden. I did not work on my book cataloging project.

I wrote.

Which doesn't seem like a break, except that for me, writing tends to be something I do in snippets of stolen time, and I spend a lot of my other time wishing I could do it. And this weekend, I said, "phooey. Everything else can wait. I'm writing."

So I did. When I wanted to take a break from writing, I caught up on work, I watched TV, I played a few games. But mostly, I wrote.

Sunday evening, I had a mini crisis in character, because I thought that with all of my self-indulgence, I should really take the time off and have a Sabbath. But then I felt guilty, because even though some people would see writing as work, for me, it was my rest, my relaxation, and I'd been doing it all weekend. So I fired up my hyper drive, and got madly productive, catching up on projects that needed to be caught up on, and at 10pm on Sunday, I started looking for more things to do.

Which is when I smacked myself and said, "wait a second. I'm okay on all the have-tos. Yes, there are more, but there will always be more. They never end."

I could have gone to bed, but I wasn't really tired. Instead, I grabbed a book I've been wanting to read for a while now. Not a have-to book, not market research, not something for work. I usually want to read those too, but this time, I deliberately chose a book that I wanted to read only for the fact that I wanted to read it.

It was a great book, and today, I am feeling more refreshed than ever. Sometimes we feel guilty for ignoring the have-tos in favor of the want-tos, but my time of indulging my want-tos has made today's have-tos get done more quickly and more efficiently than ever.

So today, give yourself a break. Find a want-to and do it. Not because you have to, but because you want to. What's on your want-to list?