{"id":36,"date":"2017-03-10T17:05:03","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T17:05:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wideopengames.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/10\/taking-breaks\/"},"modified":"2017-05-21T03:44:55","modified_gmt":"2017-05-21T03:44:55","slug":"taking-breaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wideopengames.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/10\/taking-breaks\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking breaks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Tuesday, I released <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wideopengames.com\/imperfection\/cover\/\">The Imperfection Issue<\/a>. I\u2019m really excited about it, and encourage you to check it out. Yesterday, Thursday, I didn\u2019t do <em>shit<\/em>. It was what I needed and also not what I expected.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The last few weeks, my headaches have been pretty infrequent and very manageable. And more importantly than that, I\u2019ve really come to grips with the fact that they\u2019re really tied to my stress. Which means that I\u2019m more in control of them than I thought &#8211; they\u2019re not some mysterious undiagnosable muscle ailment. If I manage my life and my stress, I can manage my headaches.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, this means I have to do more managing and being in charge of myself. It\u2019s a change of style and a challenge, but I\u2019ve been doing really well with it, lately! I\u2019m scheduling and leading, and not hiding from my stress. And my headaches have responded. Which is what made this past Wednesday so surprising.<\/p>\n<p>I felt rested and ready for the day. I had a schedule, and I felt good. But then I felt a headache coming on. I thought to myself,\u00a0\u201cNah, I\u2019m doing well. Let\u2019s keep going.\u201d I pushed forward (even though I\u2019ve <a href=\"https:\/\/wideopengames.tumblr.com\/post\/155403559157\/working-gently\">promised myself not to<\/a>), and kept pushing forward throughout the day. It culminated in a headache that night that was <b>extremely<\/b> painful. More-so than it needed to be.<\/p>\n<p>So yesterday I rested. I didn\u2019t tweet about the new issue or respond to any emails.<br \/>\nI wore socks and Chacos around the house, and didn\u2019t go outside past my front curb. I watched a mediocre documentary about magicians after lunch and only briefly got up off the couch.<\/p>\n<p>I forgave myself for pushing through the day before.<\/p>\n<p>It was amazing and rejuvenating.<\/p>\n<p>Taking breaks is vital. I hope to have the patience listen to my body and take one\u00a0<i>before<\/i> I break down next time. But I know that if I don\u2019t, it\u2019s possible to recover with a day off anyways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Tuesday, I released The Imperfection Issue. I\u2019m really excited about it, and encourage you to check it out. Yesterday, Thursday, I didn\u2019t do shit. It was what I needed and also not what I expected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,40],"tags":[22,21,23,24],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-dev","category-growth","tag-headache","tag-health","tag-rest","tag-restoration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wideopengames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wideopengames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wideopengames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wideopengames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wideopengames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.wideopengames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112,"href":"https:\/\/www.wideopengames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wideopengames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wideopengames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wideopengames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}