My unplugged day is like a Magic Rest Stop on the highway of my life.
It’s the place where I can refuel my energetic tanks. Top off my spiritual oil. Wipe clean the windows of my mind that have become foggy with too much activity and outward focus.
Plus there’s snacks!
I’ve written about my unplugged day previously HERE and HERE. (If you haven’t read these already, or want to read them again, go for it. Especially if you’re considering doing something similar yourself. I give you lots of good reasons to unplug!)
The current configuration of my Magic Rest Stop is like this: Every Monday, Melissa and I are unplugged.
We don’t work. We don’t make calls. We don’t text. We do read and we do watch TV and movies, so technically there is some plugged activity, but none of it involves active contact and interaction with the outside world.
On our unplugged days, Melissa and I even unplug from each other. This means no talking. No hanging out.
The only creature I hang out with on Mondays is our kitty Max. Max loves unplugged days. Unplugged days mean that I turn my office sofa into a bed that’s perfect for one person and one kitty to sit on and snuggle allllllll day.
So how did I plug up my unplugged day?
I started when we went on a little trip. Usually, we fold our unplugged days into trip planning. This has ensured that vacations and trips don’t burn us out. That we can return home as shiny and bright as we left.
But this trip was tricky. It was super short. It involved working a weekend at a spiritual Center, and then spending a few days with some friends.
The problem was, the trip with our friends needed to happen right after the weekend. Which stomped all over our Monday.
We’ve had to be flexible about our Mondays before. Usually we can make our unplugged day on Sunday. Or Tuesday. Or somehow arrange it so that we don’t go too long without it.
In this case, we decided to take an unplugged day on the Thursday before the big weekend. And again on the Friday after.
Sounds good, right? No problem with that plan, right?
Yeah.
So.
The first day of our time with friends I was fine. Until the end of the day.
That’s when I noticed a little tickle in my throat. And not the fun kind of tickle that makes you laugh. This was a scary, foreboding tickle.
The next day, I woke up sick. And I was sick for the entire rest of our time together.
Melissa and I changed our unplugged day to Thursday instead of Friday so we could stay put and I could recover before the drive back home.
And it was during that unplugged day, during that day of quiet and contemplation, that I realized what had happened.
It looked good on paper to have an unplugged day before and after our work and vacation-with-friends time. But that plan didn’t take into account how much energy we expend on a work weekend. In this case, our weekend consisted of teaching an all-day Saturday Enneagram workshop, followed by a Sunday morning talk and music, followed by an afternoon social gathering with people from the spiritual community.
There was one thing and one thing only we needed the day after that: To be unplugged.
Indeed, a key reason that our unplugged days are on Mondays in the first place is that Mondays follow weekends. Weekends when we are sometimes working and expending loads of energy.
But we’d felt, in this case, that we couldn’t take the Monday. That the schedule didn’t allow it.
Or did it?
After my unplugged day and before we started driving home, I told one of our friends what had happened. This was one of the friends who had been on the vacation with us.
She said that Monday is usually her unplugged day too. She said that she would have been happy to start our vacation with everyone being solo and unplugged on the first day.
It also turned out that another one of our vacation friends left a day early because she needed to get more down time before an upcoming event.
In other words, if I had advocated for myself and asked for what I wanted, a Magic Rest Stop to reset and recharge, it would have been the best for everyone else too.
What a concept.
The reason I didn’t advocate for myself is that I was assuming no one else would want a Magic Rest Stop. I was assuming that our scheduled time together needed to be social. Not restful and unplugged.
Even though this was a gathering of other ministers who tend to love a good Rest Stop.
So much for assumptions.
I should also note that tightly woven into my assumptions were strong threads of people pleasing.
My needs came second to the needs of the group and what they wanted. Even though the “needs of the group,” in my mind, were entirely fictional. Better to have just advocated for myself in the first place and run my desires by my friends.
What a concept. Again.
In addition to waking me up about assumptions and people pleasing, the whole episode also reminded me how important my unplugged days are. And that messing with them messes with me.
I love my work. I love what Melissa and I are doing. But sometimes what we do takes a lot of energy, and I need to be very generous with my recovery time.
I must respect the Magic Rest Stop. I must honor the Magic Rest Stop.
And did I mention the snacks?
What about you? Do you take an unplugged day? What do you do with changes of schedule? Share your comments below!
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