I'm back

Last week around Tuesday, my chest started to hurt and I couldn't catch my breath, despite trying my hardest to expand my lungs. This went on for a couple days and then I started feeling strange pains in various areas of my body.

"Funny", I thought to myself, this is exactly how I felt when I was at school and would occasionally suffer through all-nighters at the end of the term.  That's when it clicked.  I was over tired. I then realized the reason my chest hurt was because I was yawning so much during the day, I was straining myself.

Last week followed Mike's eye surgery, (he's doing much better by the way and his eyes are healing well), which I imagine was the final straw and sent me into this condition.

I didn't work out at all last week, except for Gimli's walks, and I did my best to crawl into bed at a respectable hour, somewhere between 10 and 11.  I slept a bit better Tuesday night.  Wednesday morning I woke up not quite refreshed, but the breathing issues stopped.  I've been taking it easy the last few days trying to replenish my energy and sleeping patterns.

Today, I came across this article from Oprah's site: 5 Ways to Bring Yourself Back from Burnout. Looking at the five different categories, I feel I was a combination between 'Draggin' and 'Hitting the wall' as I had symptoms of both.  I've decided I'm going to take an active stand in preventing burnout because I don't want this to happen again, if I can help it.  One of my initiatives this year is to get more sleep and I have my work cut out for me.

There will be no check in this week because I didn't do much and I expect it to be mainly the same.  My hope is to be back to it again this week so I don't undo my progress thus far.  In a bit of good news, I wore my short peacoat this weekend and it wasn't as tight as when I last wore it in November.  I'm getting there, just slowly.