I love being busy. I didn’t think I would actually. Mostly because I also love my alone time and just relaxing. But I really like being active and well, doing things. Slowly my days, weeks, and months became filled with activities. Some days it is a boot camp or fitness class after work, other days it’s a committee meeting, volunteer opportunity, happy hour or dinner, or social event. It didn’t hit me how busy I was becoming until my friend asked if we could hang out and see a movie and after consulting my calendar, the next open day was 3 weeks away.

As winter approaches, things have started to slow down, but I’m still go, go, go. Don’t get me wrong, I still relax. Most of my week nights end with a quiet dinner and a couple hours of TV. But each day after work seems to have some additional event or activity. Rarely do I find that I’m truly bored. In fact, I’m probably guilty of trying to do too much, of wanting to do it all.

That is until I got sick.

I’m pretty fortunate to say that I don’t get many colds. In fact, I think it’s been a few years since I got one bad enough to miss work or class or whatever I had going on. But this cold hit me pretty hard. It started in my head, moved to my chest and then a week later, moved to my stomach. I missed work. Harder for me, was missing my workouts. Mentally I was ready to be back working out, but physically my body wasn’t ready. Every day I would start the day by saying, I think today I can workout, but after wheezing after walking up a hill, I knew that my body needed to rest. Truly rest.

So for a week, I did nothing. I didn’t work out. I didn’t go out. I rested and relaxed. And it was hard and weird for me. But I came to some important realizations during my forced downtime.

1.  You can’t do everything, and that’s okay. It’s okay to say “no” to plans. There will be more opportunities in the future, and life goes on even if you aren’t at a particular event. FOMO (fear of missing out) can’t dictate your life. You will miss out. It’s inevitable. But it’s okay. Life goes on and you’ll be fine.

2. It’s good to have a schedule and stick to it, but sometimes schedules have to be broken. Especially when it comes to fitness. Monday is tabata, Tuesday is bootcamp, Wednesday is an off day or a morning half hour workout, Thursday is kenpo, Friday is rest. The weekend is some sort of active pursuit, a bike ride, tennis, a run. But you can’t be obsessive. It’s about being healthy, so when you’re sick, it’s healthy to rest and let your body recover. You aren’t being lazy. You’re being responsible.

3. Being sick can mess with your diabetes. Your numbers can go crazy, you can feel weird and not know why, you can need your inhaler and feel like you have low blood sugar, but really be fine. And it can be frustrating when blood sugars soar despite your best efforts. But sometimes things happen that are out of your control and you can’t beat yourself up about it. You just have to do your best moving forward.

No one likes being sick. And it’s a hard adjustment when you’re used to being so busy and high energy. But I guess it was my body’s way of making me slow down. Am I still going to fill my week with plans? Yes. But going forward, I’m going to listen to my body, prioritize my health, and know that no one can do everything, and you know what, that’s perfectly okay.