Mrs 70%

So it's been ages since the last chemo and I am still feeling ... well ... I'm not one to easily use poor language ... but ... I'm feeling crap.

I went to the naturopath and whinged, and told her all my woes. She looked at me sternly, then proceeded to line up a little bottle, followed by a bigger bottle, followed by an even bigger stapler.

"If you use up 100% of your energy every day", she said, "then you will have the energy of the little bottle. When you go to bed at night, your body will be really busy recuperating, but because it's starting at zero (because you've used up everything), it will only be able to recuperate and become the little bottle again. So the next day, you will feel like the little bottle."

"Aha", I commented vaguely.

"But", naturopath continued with stern gaze, "if you only use 70% of your energy, then when you go to bed your body will be starting at 30%. So it can recuperate to become the bigger bottle the next day."

"Oooh!", I exclaimed. This was sounding good. I really want to become the bigger bottle.

"And if you consistently keep using just 70% of your energy, every single day", she went on, "then one day you can become the stapler. I want you to become the stapler."

"A-ha" moment. If I had been working at 100%, I guess things wouldn't be so bad. But the truth is, that I commit at least 110% to pretty much everything I do. And I am a performance fanatic. Which means that I can manage to pack a huge number of things into my day, with one task separated from another task by mere nanoseconds. Each task being done to about 110%. Hello? Who are we kidding here? Let's stop beating around the bush ... it's mad!

So, I now have to go from being ultra performance machine working at 110%, to just being Mrs 70%. It's hard. Really hard. I mean, when I'm folding the washing, and I've got through 70% of it, I just have to stop and say to myself "oh, I'm too tired to do the rest". Feels very foreign to me.