Mental Health Day

These three pictures totally sum up my day yesterday - 

Sometimes, you just need to take a mental health day. A friend from grade school's mom called them this and it's stuck with me since. I haven't really realized the need for them until law school though. Yesterday I woke up and just wasn't feeling Wednesday. I had planned to wake up, go on a 4 mile run, and get a lot done. I woke up feeling hungover, even though I haven't had any alcohol since Saturday. So I woke up, got my coffee, and sat down on my couch. And didn't move. For 7 episodes of Gilmore Girls.

It started out with me doing citations and watching Gilmore Girls at the same time, so you know, I was being 50% productive. But 11:00am, my headache was getting worse and I was worried that it was the beginning of a migraine (ugh, something that also hasn't happened to me until law school started. I blame the law and genetics, aka my mom). If anyone has gotten a migraine before, you know how awful they are. And (for me at least) they are usually brought on by stress. It was at that point I decided I should just give up on my productive day and take care of my mind. No running, no going anywhere, and no worrying about the fact that I wasn't doing anything productive.

And it was amazing.

I continued watching Gilmore Girls well into the afternoon. I own every single season, but the fact that it's now on Netflix just makes me want to re-watch it with the rest of the world. So I started at the very beginning and made it through episode 7 (and I'm not even ashamed to admit that).

I then read a book (not law related) for about an hour. My current book is Boys on the Boat, which is about the University of Washington Men's crew team that won the Olympics and beat out Hitler's prized German team. Since 1) I went to UW 2) I love reading about WWII 3) I love learning about what Seattle was like 90 years ago, it's so far been amazing. I'm 200 pages in and would highly recommend it to anyone.

I did a little laundry (this was necessary because I had no clothes).

I made my favorite meal for dinner - breakfast for dinner! I made homemade breakfast potatoes on my new Iron Skillet (sooooo good), scrambled eggs, and a pumpkin pancake.

I never got out of my PJs.

All in all, it was an amazing day. I think mental health days really are necessary. Even though it can be hard to stop thinking about all the things you SHOULD be doing, your body needs rest. Your mind needs rest. By the end of the day, my headache had subsided and I felt good. I think it was my body's way of warning me that I needed to make sure that I wasn't stressing myself out to the point of exhaustion. School is important. Extracurriculars are important. Exercising is important. But taking one day off once in a while is perfectly fine.

I think I will start scheduling more mental health days into my future :)