Proactive self-care

To make it to the “finish line,” we need to take care of ourselves before we have to

I am accustomed to full days. When our house was filled with children, and with both Claudia and I working full-time, every minute was precious. Juggling the family calendar, caring for the emotional and physical needs of our family and maintaining work responsibilities meant our lives were extraordinarily full. Claudia and I took brief breaks when we could find them, and thanks to her proactivity, we were able to get away together usually a cumulative two weeks together in the midst of it all.

Life has changed rather dramatically for me over the past decade as our children, one by one, found their own wings and flew from our family nest. It was only a few months before Claudia’s death that our last children made that transition, and I found our home with just Claudia and me remaining to be too quiet. In the final months, we didn’t even have a pet. I didn’t like it.

So when Claudia died, and it was I only living in our spacious home in Virginia, it was overwhelmingly quiet. I was able to fill my hours with ministry in a church I loved, in packing and cleaning to prepare for our home’s sale. During those first months following Claudia’s death, I needed more sleep than before, so between keeping myself busy and resting, my days were still quite full.

My half-way-across-the-country move last June occupied my attention: a new home and neighborhood, visits to and from family members, immersion in a new pastoral world. With so many new experiences before me, I had little interest in leaving town and found the comfort of my home to be a refuge. Moving into a home alone for the first time in three decades, a sense of aloneness occupied my inner world. I was uncomfortable driving too far alone, airline travel held no appeal and I was unsure of my financial situation. All in all, I simply stayed close to home.

In time, with some helpful prodding from my supervisor and reminders from my congregation, I recognized it was time make plans to use vacation time. Because of my years of service, I am fortunate to have a generous annual vacation allotment, and I had used little by the nine-month mark.

So, in less than two weeks I will be in Boston for several days to indulge my hobby interest. It’s unusual for me; typically when I have traveled it’s for a continuing education event or something work-related in one way or another, so taking this trip simply because it’s something I’m interested in is a new thing for me.

Even though I haven’t “taken vacation” in the traditional way over the past year, I find other ways to ensure I’m taking care of myself. In particular, one of the practices I have attempted to maintain over many years now is a simple one, but a healthy one for me.

As I plan out my week (usually Sunday nights or first thing Monday morning), I look at each day in my calendar as having four blocks of time: morning, afternoon, evening and sleep. In a typical day, I make sure I have time for sleep (which for me usually means about 7 hours a night), and then I “work” no more than two of the remaining three blocks of time. Today, for example, I have an afternoon meeting and an evening meeting, so this morning I am staying close to home to tend to details here.

There are some weeks, of course, when this approach does not work, and there are days when I need to be fully occupied in all three blocks of non-sleep time, but I have found that if I push myself too had for too long, no one benefits. At times when I have done that, I have found that I am then forced — by illness or ennui or exhaustion — to find time to recuperate. This usually results in more time taken away from my otherwise enjoyable tasks, so I have learned I have to be proactive.

Proactive self-care is not something I innately possess. I have learned through those around me over the years the importance of hard, sustained work. Culture places a value on industriousness, diligence, resilience. All of these are good character traits, of course, but without opportunity to refocus and relax, ultimately effectiveness lags.

Sometimes when I am proactively self-caring, I feel a twinge of guilt like I should be doing something more productive, but I think today I’m going to let the beautiful warm sunlight and bright blue skies wash those feelings away.

It’s a good thing to be proactive — instead of reactive — when it comes to self-care.