Overextended Syndrome

I heard from a friend who's feeling seriously overextended - a condition with which I'm well acquainted. I suggested she take a few days off, and she replied:

"I worry that if I relax at all, I'll epiphanize and decide to ditch the frenzy and go off the grid entirely... Cut to me wearing no shoes and foraging for berries off the Interstate."

I can sympathize to an almost nauseating degree. And now that I've had a good bit of decompression time (no shoeless foraging, but close to it), I have some perspective, which I shared with her...and now share with you:

"Life is extremely short. Even shorter than one imagines when one hears that cliche. If you don't believe it, ask any old person.

"If what you're working on brings satisfaction, then great. Redouble your efforts and work even harder! Life is too short to work half-assed on things you deeply believe in. This ain't a dress rehearsal!

"If what you're working on is just stemming from inertia and grind, know that you are your own jailer, and you hold the keys. Just because you started a process doesn't mean you must forever be a slave to it.

"If what you're working on is about pursuit of accomplishment, a brief look at humanity will quickly illustrate that accomplishment is an ever-thirsty treadmill. We will die and be utterly forgotten very very quickly. So we may as well make every day count by doing what's meaningful to us, in blithe disregard to illusory notions of stature and other external appearances."

(Re: "thirsty treadmills": it's my Slog, and I'll mix metaphors if I want to!)