Relaxing

As has been discussed in this forum previously, I’m not good at relaxing. Really not good at relaxing. As a result, my schedule last week did not include work related to my dissertation (except for finishing up my revisions on Friday), but did include approximately 1,000,000 other things that needed to get done. I also started a running list of other stuff that needed to be completed before returning to the medical school. This sort of thing usually calms me because I feel more organized, but by yesterday afternoon I had worked myself into such a state that I was completely overwhelmed. I quickly realized that this was not good, and vowed (again) to relax a bit.

Success! This morning, Walt and I stayed in bed and read until after 9am and it was really wonderful. Walt did less reading, but still enjoyed the relaxing morning. I finished Little Bee, a book my Aunt Elizabeth sent for my birthday, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a surprisingly easy read for the subject matter (asylum-seeking, oil wars, and serious mental health issues, among others) and very well written. I enjoyed the style so much I purchased the audiobook version of the author’s other book, Incendiary. This is the kind of morning we had:

I also worked through my list of stuff to do and partitioned it out over the days of this week. I’m feeling good about getting everything done, and have reminded myself 2-3 times already that I have a few more weeks left as well.

In closing, here is a photo of Walter attempting to sleep on every item on the futon all at once:

There are actually two pillows underneath him...