Whine, Whine, Whine...

...and it's not the whine of a buzz saw (see previous post...).  I've got the flu.  Nope, not man flu, even though I did get it from my husband, who believes in share and share alike...  The real, achy, coughing, sneezing flu.  Bleh.

For once, I'm practicing what I preach.  I'm tucked up in bed, with a cat at my side, feeling marginally better than yesterday, playing silly games on Facebook and sleeping a lot.  When I'm sleeping, I'm dreaming of hats, and weddings, and friends.  This is not a bad way to dream...  I'm leaving the hanging of our exhibition to Jill and Clare, and may not even make it to tomorrow night's opening.  This is not like me.  But I'm of the view that pushing myself to get up and out of bed is just so much wasted energy.  Better to keep it for getting better.  Health, in my book, comes before productivity, and marketing, and all those things... if I'm not well, I'm not well. 

That's not always the case when I'm depressed, though.  Over the years, I've come to realise that getting up and going for a walk, or to make something, will help to lift the depression, rather than make it worse.  Physical illness needs lots of rest.  Depression tells you it needs lots of rest, but if you can persuade it to shut up for five minutes, enough time to get engrossed in making or writing something, then often you feel refreshed and A Whole Lot Better.  It's a balancing act.  If it doesn't work after ten or fifteen minutes, I go for a nap.  There are worse things to do with ones time. 

Be kind to yourself, is what I'm trying to say, here.  Even when it feels as if you're being cruel, initially, like forcing yourself to work.  It may not fix everything...it may not even help anything... but it's always worth a try.