Plastics - Aislinn Langley

When it comes to school, I can procrastinate and be as lazy as the next person. But when I meet a specific challenge or have something to prove, I shift into high gear and become a workaholic. This habit is displayed at the end of semesters when I lose awareness of time and my own person to study, or when I get extremely invested in a book and can't sleep until I've finished it. This can obviously be detrimental to my health. When I'm sick, I'm the person who denies it and keeps on trucking to do whatever needs to be done. But I didn't begin to learn my lesson until my habit of putting productivity before health was played out on a larger scale: working at camp.
Working at a summer camp is exhausting as it is, but when you put duty and helpfulness before personal health, there are disastrous outcomes. I learned this the hard way. My first summer, I was a volunteer and I worked myself into the ground to prove that I would be a good employee if hired the following summer. During meals, I would help in the kitchen and on my breaks, I would work on summer homework or just skip breaks altogether. By the middle of my second week, I was clinically fatigued. I collapsed on an empty bunk in the staff cabin and didn't get up for twelve hours. My hands shook to the point that I couldn't tie my shoes or even change clothes. I was put on bed rest for the whole next day with orders from the camp nurse to "learn to take care of myself."
And those orders, which in a less serious situation would have been advice, have stuck with me. I still work too hard at things that matter to me, but in the years following that summer, I've become more aware of my own needs. Whenever I think, even for a second, that what I'm doing is more important than my well-being, I think back to the humiliation, frustration, and downright terror I felt when I realized I couldn't even unbutton my pants without help and the stern advice I received from that nurse, as well as many others. I have to take care of myself.