Stretched thin

I hope everyone had a good weekend. I had family events on Saturday and Sunday, so I am recovering today. I also had two days of enforced rest on Thursday and Friday. Enforced by me, and I managed to pull it off, too.

As a warning, this will be a physical condition post for those who are curious or want to know they are not the only ones in their particular predicament.

So…

That task I set myself of preparing for possible new appliance deployment, though it was an intermittent effort, really did me in. I may have hurt myself. Last Wednesday I realized that I had hit a point that I haven’t been at it in quite a while. I ignored the warning signs, like easy things leaving me exhausted, and I kept pushing. My wife calls this being manic, I say it’s being obsessed, so we compromise and call it a compulsion. It’s a state where I don’t want to let myself stop because I worry about things backsliding.

But I went way too far and actually started going backwards physically. I am more than tired. I have a deep exhaustion that permeates my being. Just to be a geek, I will mention that the perfect description is from The Fellowship of the Ring – Bilbo Baggins, his age unnaturally extended, describes feeling thin and stretched, like butter spread over too much bread.

That’s how I feel. There’s nothing left. There are no energy reserves, no more strength, no more stamina – and yet I still feel as if I need to keep doing things. Something, anything, to prove that I can get things done and to accomplish something more than being, well, more than being what I am and admitting to my limitations. I am forced to face those limitations when this sort of thing happens.

I hope the fact that I managed to rest for a couple of days indicates that I am learning from all of this. That would mean that there’s hope for all sorts of improvement, in a careful, moderate sort of way.