Personal Energy Conservation

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Some sort of virus ambushed me a couple days before Christmas and gave me a sore throat and cold. The sore throat left; the cold symptoms are hanging on tenaciously.

I’ve always been able to work through having a cold, but not this one. I reported off work three days over these past few weeks, and left work early one day, feeling too drained to complete the shift. That’s not me.

While feeling better now–I worked a 2 pm to 9pm shift Friday followed by 7am to 2pm shift yesterday without feeling drained–I’m still not up to par.

With this cold, I have to practice personal energy conservation. I do some things, then decide to let other things go until another time, rather than continuing to work and making myself too tired. For instance, following an overnight snowfall, this afternoon I swept the car off, swept the upstairs porch steps, cleaned the sidewalk off and scattered de-icing material on it, took cans out and put them in the recycling bin and walked my route around the house to feed the birds. By then I felt as though anything more would be too much. Taking the garbage out would have to wait. Cleaning up pine tree branches in the yard definitely will have to wait for a day when the weather is better and my energy and enthusiasm are back  to rights.

Practicing personal energy conservation isn’t fun, but my body is enforcing the idea right now. I look forward to the days when I’ll be even stronger; as it is, I now have greater sympathy for, and a lot less judgment of, people who must practice personal energy conservation all the time due to chronic illness or pain, whether physical or emotional.

©P. Booher