From Lindley, with Love

“Just hold still,” the nurse said impatiently as she attempted to swab the back of my throat. My head was cocked at a strange angle, making the whole procedure rather difficult.

“But I don’t have—uurgh. Fine.”

It was December 1999, and I was sitting in the infirmary at my tiny college. The infirmary had exactly two remedies for any situation: a strep test, and a referral to the town doctor’s office for a mono test. Unfortunately, I’d walked in the door with neither ailment: My head was cocked to the side because I couldn’t straighten it. The muscles in my neck had gotten so knotted from tension they wouldn’t move.

Since I was young and without transportation or insurance, I went through all of exam week like that, writing and showering and sleeping with my head cocked to the side. A friend finally lent me her heating pad and with its help I was able to massage my neck muscles out of their cramp.

That was my first encounter with stress-related injuries.

The next year, I caught the flu the day before exams. In both semesters.

In my third year, I had my first desktop computer and was inordinately proud of it. (My roommate, who had to share the phone line with my dialup Internet, was not as impressed.) Due to the way our dorm room was configured, I spent that year sitting on the bed with the computer keyboard on my lap and the mouse on a mousepad next to me on the bed. And gave myself a repetitive strain injury that would haunt me for the rest of my life.

It seems that I have the exact combination of factors needed for stress-related injuries and illnesses: a not-particularly-robust immune system, muscles that tighten immensely under strain, and a workaholic, high-intensity, overachiever personality.

When I was younger, I shrugged it off. A little flu or chronic pain never hurt anyone, right? At a little over 30, though, my body is simply letting me know that it’s done. Sure, I could continue to juggle a full-time job and two time-consuming hobbies and a family and pets and et cetera forever, but increasingly I’m not willing to pay the price in pain, physical and mental.

Which brings us back to why I disappeared a few months ago. I developed another chronic, painful muscle injury and started getting sick again. I had strep throat for the first time since childhood and was sick for most of September and October. At this moment, I have the type of cold I only catch when I’m super stressed out.

Cutting back is hard. Our culture values the workaholic. Even at my relatively casual and progressive day-job office, working way over 40 hours simply so you’re not see as the office slacker holds strong.

This is particularly prevalent in the small business resources available online these days. Can’t find your audience? Well, you should be using Twitter and Facebook and a blog and a newsletter and and and. If that’s not working, then there are expensive blogging courses that promise to solve all your problems, as long as you’re willing to dedicate four hours a day to blogging. And so on. It’s a vicious cycle and it becomes so easy for you to blame yourself if you can’t squeeze out yet another ten minutes a day for yet another social media channel or blog technique or whatever. It’s so easy to lose sight of why you’re there.

I’m here because what I have to say about body image and weight and health is important. But it’s not more important than my own mental and physical health. And now that I’m not 21 any more, I’m discovering that packing every single minute full of activity isn’t as satisfying as it used to be. It’s nice to be able to read a book, or take a walk, and not stress over the fact that I haven’t written a blog post yet this week, or retweeted my latest post the prescribed three times at peak traffic hours. Beyond being nice, it’s increasingly necessary; my body just won’t let me overachieve while sacrificing it any more.

I’m not saying goodbye, not closing up the blog or the From Lindley, with Love jewelry lines. But I am accepting my limits and scaling back. The shop will likely move solely to Etsy. I love my current e-commerce site, but it’s expensive to maintain in both money and time. The blog may actually see more posts from me soon, since I’m more likely to post when I don’t feel the pressure to “do” every social media site in existence along with it.

Some days, scaling back feels like defeat. But increasingly, it feels like relief, the realization that I don’t have to work through pain and stress to feel productive or valuable. May we all, individually and as a society, reach that conclusion and find peace with it.