Rest is a productive use of time
My son believes I work too hard. I love my day job, so it doesn’t feel like work to me but my fitness app is of the same opinion “try to optimise rest today”.
Economically, I’m very much of the belief that hard work pays dividends, gets rewarded, etc. But only 10% of effort is typically worthwhile out of 100% of time, think of it as an oven coming up to temperature – yes we can do without the pre-heating often, but the results are not necessarily achieved any quicker.
Like the mind, the human body is much the same, hitting the gym harder and more frequently does not reward. But it’s hard to say no, to sit quietly, and do “something selfish”. I am “resting” by making chicken stock today, for goodness sake. Yesterday, I made a quiche from scratch, pastry and all. And working out how to make puff pastry from scratch – not necessarily stress free options!
My quality rest time is in the bath – but because of my wearables, it isn’t the escape it used to be with a paper book and no screens.
I do try to day-dream, but it’s a different kind of rest, an examination of the art of the possible and there is always the phone there, waiting to tell me I’m right or wrong. Yesterday, I was reading about radiator reflectors and different u values for windows… strange where the mind goes.
Today, shock of shocks, I left home to get the Sunday paper WITHOUT my phone. Honestly, and when I realised that was the case, I very nearly ran back to get it, just because I would not have the convience of my blood glucose reading on my wrist!
I stuck to my guns though and had 14 minutes disconnected. Although my pump does read my blood glucose sensor, so I wasn’t operating in the dark.
But, that’s what we did. I often tested more than my contemporaries to ensure my pump was working as expected, but we didn’t have an always on read out of what was happening.
How on earth did you make decisions?
It was guess work. Point readings and guess work and, sometimes, those guesses were spot on. But I did rely on listening to my body, and that is still with me – I do question when I get an “unexpected reading” from the intistatial monitor, for example.
Was it less stressful?
That’s a good question.
It was quieter, and I do miss that. Doing a basal run (fasting to establish background insulin requirements) was painful and lacked clarity of when basal rate change times needed to be done, but it was usually done in three days or so, one to get the readings and two to see what the changes meant.
Life is better but it’s all very chatty and sometimes, I just want some quiet. I know Libre doesn’t suit me well but doing that for a month might be a nice holiday. Or even going back to capillary blood testing.
It’s been five years, don’t I deserve a break?
Posted: July 12th, 2025 under 42, Diabetes.