I’m really very bad at being on vacation — I’d allotted myself 7 days to do nothing productive, and I just can’t. In part, that’s because the house was a disaster with the run-up to the end of the year, so I really did need to put in a few hours a day on organizing and cleaning up, once the exhaustion had passed.
In the process, I’ve found a few items that need passing on — a bouncy chair thingie that I somehow bought even though it’s much too small for my kids and it’s past the return window, and a puzzle of The Kiss, which I honestly don’t remember where it came from, and I can’t guarantee it has all the pieces, but probably? Locals, if you’d like either / both of these and can come pick up on my porch in the next few days, please holler.
I started exercising again yesterday, which is good, but I also started working a little bit. Just a wee bit. A few book packages going out the door, a few messages answered. Mostly, though, I’m trying not to do anything sustained yet.
Entertainment does help — I’ve started watching Britain’s Best Home Cook (Hulu), which is quite nice if you’re looking for something similar in feel to Great British Baking Show. Of course, I can’t sit still and just watch TV, so I do tend to end up cleaning up / ironing / sewing, etc.
Better for MAKING me sit still is reading or playing video games. Well, not necessarily sit still — I can walk on the treadmill while reading at speed 3.0, and I can play at least some video games while walking at speed 2.0. Which is better than sitting on my butt all day, now that I’m not utterly exhausted anymore. I do sit sometimes, though. 
I’ve finished all of Martha Wells’s novels (well, aside from her two tie-in books), so I’ve turned to the list of recommendations people gave me a few weeks ago and bought several. I tried Boyfriend Material first, and it is quite funny and enjoyable, a contemporary m/m romance set in Britain (Roshani, I think you’d like this).
It actually has one striking similarity with Wells’s Murderbot books which I want to talk about more in another post once I finish reading this (probably later today, I’m ripping through it). That will involve spoilers for characterization, though, esp. for Murderbot, so I recommend skipping that post if you haven’t read those books yet.
I’ve also tried a new video game. I’m thinking a lot, off and on, about what I want to be spending my time on in 2022. There will be long thinky posts about that coming, I’m sure. But I think gaming is likely to be part of it, specifically role-playing games of some kind.
So I downloaded Lords of Waterdeep, the iOS adaptation of the board game (which I don’t own and haven’t played), and I’m enjoying it. It’s D&D-based, put out by Wizards of the Coast, so if you like that kind of thing, take a look. I’m just playing against the computer on easy mode right now, but eventually, I might want to play with actual people. (Jed?)
There is maybe something a little wrong with me, that I have to force myself to relax. I really have gotten very used to the satisfaction I get from creating / producing / completing — I found myself getting a little sad and mopey on Sunday night, I think because I hadn’t created anything in a few days. I felt better yesterday, even though I stayed up a little late, because I cooked a really good curry and sewed a scarf and a head wrap.
It’s all about the balance, I think, the ratio of work to rest and relaxation. Really not so easy, though, getting the balance right…
