I really appreciated the four day weekend we had for the Christmas holiday. I had a good time relaxing during the time off.
I really did not mind going back to work, and I did not think I had a stressful week ahead of me, but I was wrong. One of my assigned areas is experiencing drastic changes, which creates turmoil for staff and patients, and requires me to learn about and get to know, almost an entire pod of new patients. This takes time, and in the meanwhile, we have to balance providing care with learning who needs what.
Add to that, a shortage of security which limits being able to see patients, and an area with a lot of behavior turmoil by one or more patients. It was a very long day.
Yet, when I signed out after 5:30 PM tonight, it appeared that there were still several clinicians in the building. So, I was not alone. One phenomenon that it took me until sometime in the late 1990's to realize, is that when I have a short work week, I still have the self-expectation that I am going to get 40 hours of work done during that week. I have had to learn to reduce my expectations of what I will accomplish in a short week, and consequently, do better. But this week was still difficult. I am mentally tired.
Having said that, I am finding that when I am mentally tired, if I exercise my brain anyway, I feel better. At the very least, I do some games such as jigsaw puzzles and sudoku that tax my brain. I also do crossword puzzles, and word jumbles. It is also true of physical activity: if I am mentally tired, but do some physical activity, I feel better.
Sometimes, I think I am too tired to try to knit, but after I get started, I find myself relaxing.
Being mentally tired is deceiving: you think you can not do anything else, yet doing relaxing things is really the best thing for you.
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