I will admit that I am a chronic workaholic. I will work my 8 hours at the studios before heading home to work yet another 6 hours before collapsing into bed exhausted only to wake and do it all again the next day. Weekends are no different, really. I will spend up to 20 hours working again on the weekend. But that's what happens when you work full time and have a home business as well.
But the whole thing falls down when you are sick. I have not had bronchitis for at least 8 years. But it made its not-so-welcome return this week to both myself and hubby.
And we, both workaholics, were both stopped dead in our tracks. My boss banned me from bringing the lurgy to work and so did his boss.
We were stuck at home unable to work, unable to go out and completely uninterested in making something more productive of our time in bed.
What do you do when you're stuck in the house for two days?
Evidently, you think.
And watch DVDs.
But I did a lot of thinking.
I thought about how I never really had formally thanked hubby for taking a chance on a guy from the tropics who had cancer and had to move to Perth years ago. I had never formally thanked him for moving his life to Perth and then Hobart with me having only known me for a few months. I never formally thanked him for then going ahead and buying a home in Tasmania with me.
It's funny how in the midst of all that work, travel, home-buying and business-building that I had never really sat down and thought about thanking him properly.
So lying on the queen mattress we had moved to the lounge room I looked at him and gave him a kiss on the cheek and thanked him for all those things. And it felt good. Not that I had thanked him, but that I had even thought of it. It reminded me that, despite all the madness of working two jobs with a couple of freelance bits on the side, that I was still human. But it took me getting sick before that humanity emerged again.
Although I absolutely hate being sick and almost despise simple relaxation, I am reminded why, back in 2000, that I left a rat-race life in Sydney behind for a variety of regional cities.
I did it for lifestyle. I did it for a slower pace of life. I did it for health.
Now in Tasmania, the one place where the geography and climate is almost designed for slowing down, I find myself still going at full pace.
Sometimes we never learn. Four bouts of cancer taught me nothing about slowing down. Deaths of those close to me didn't teach me a thing.
Perhaps a mild dose of bronchitis could do the trick.
But I am not counting on it.
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