Today is the first day of my two weeks off from work and of course the cold that I felt various symptoms of in the last few days breaks out full force. Ok, I might exaggerate a bit, after all it’s just a bit of everything: running nose, a bit of a cough, but all in all annoying! I want to enjoy my time off and not need to deal with those (minor) issues. When the symptoms didn’t disappear on the 2nd day, I did take a COVID test (or two) which came back negative. A coworker is out with COVID at the moment, because that fuck isn’t over, even though it’s hardly talked about anymore.
Over the past few days / weeks maybe even I realized I’m in dire need of time off.
Time off from work, which is a bit stressful at the moment, especially for someone like me who tends to stress out a lot about stuff.
Time off from my digital world to some extent.
Time off from the news. I think and stress and worry and argue (with whom?) in my head way too much about some stuff. I have so many half-finished, ambiguous thoughts and ideas in my head. Terror attacks happening here in Germany not too far from where I live. Politicians and parties reacting to that in their usual “let’s see how can be more populistic” kind of way. Right-wing / populistic parties on the rise. About the war going on in Gaza. About all those other places in the world where horrible things happen right now and the western world isn’t really watching. The war, famine and flood in Sudan for (just one) instance. And yes, I’m aware of my privilege that I can just turn off the news for a few days.
Taking time to properly read some good books and not just tear through some superficial (turned out to be sort of crappy) contemporary romances I picked from my to-read-list for some distraction form all those stressing-me-out thoughts mentioned above.
Taking time to be with myself for a bit. Introspection. Journalling maybe. Starting to read some of the self-care-books on my shelf. Taking time to listen in at some online “selfcare classes” offered through my place of work in a “Personal Growth Week” next week. Even though I’m off work, I can easily access those classes, and I plan to do.
Taking time for some crafts. Doodling. Photography and photo-editing.
Taking time to listen to music and podcasts and maybe audiobooks.
Where am I planning to do all that? Here….
Leaving on Friday morning for a whole week. I’ll be staying in apartment complex less than 5 minutes from the beach. There is a village / small town near-ish by and of course some restaurants and such all around. It is a tourist destination after all. I don’t plan to make much use of any of that though. I feel like hibernating, not necessarily in my apartment, but on my blanket on the beach.
This morning, I made a basic (aka boring) meal plan and from that compiled a long list of groceries I plan to bring. I know I could buy some of them there in the supermarket when I arrive, but I’m a bit sceptic (aka worried) about prices and availability. A meal plan also for the reason, that about 10 days ago I gave “intermittent fasting” another try. I did a version of the 14:10 variant for a while last year, where you either miss breakfast and/or don’t too late, so that you fast for 14 hours and only eat within the timespan of the other 10 hours. I lost a bit of weight back then, which was nice but not the motivation as such. At some point the evening snacking habit came back and I gave up on that strict schedule.
A friend recently mentioned doing the 5:2 variant at the moment and I looked into that and a bit on a whim started Saturday two weeks ago. You basically eat normally on 5 days a week at whatever time suits you and on two day you fast as in only consume about 500 calories. Which sounds like not much and it is indeed not much. You need lots of liquid on those days. And / or burn some more calories, which I did on my 3rd fasting day (last Saturday), so I could eat a bit more.
Still not much. Is that cheating? I don’t know. I don’t care, it works for me. I’ve lost about 4-5 pounds since I started about 10 days ago. Admittedly, I also paid more attention to what I eat on the regular days and not overindulge on those either, so that might have contributed to the quick weight loss as well.
I thought about taking a break from that for my vacation by the sea, but then thought better of it and am planning to continue and make the switch from Saturday/Tuesday as fasting days to Monday/Thursday, because that are days I’m usually working from home, which feels like good days because work distracts me during the day. Fasting at the office feels like too much trouble at the moment. Saturday isn’t a good day for it either, but I started on a Saturday and my office / work-from-home days were irregular since then as well, so I need some time off to switch to a 5:2 schedule easier to handle in the long run.
