Well, last week wasn't fun!! I managed to finish the book one cover in time to meet the deadline but had to push a whole lotta things to the side to do so. I'm going to have to hustle the next two weeks to make up for that time, BUT. BUT!! By the end of the week, I did manage to squeeze in a little time to do some not-work things, and I--drumroll please--hung up the spice rack I bought! Last January! That's right, I had a giant, 18x30" spice rack just sitting in my office for an entire year because I couldn't find the time to hang it.

That's the magic of my new State-Mandated Personal Hour, an idea I came up with in therapy to force myself to devote at least one hour of the day to not-working. I discovered that telling myself, "You deserve to do things that aren't work" wasn't really working, because my brain would just respond, "If you wanted to take a break so badly, you should've worked harder earlier. Checkmate, liberal." But if I mentally split myself into a worker-self and a supervisor-self, and I imagine that worker-self as a union member, then of course I have to give myself breaks, or else I will be rightfully guillotined when the revolution comes! Of course, union members are entitled to much more than an hour of non-work a day, but . . . baby steps.