Day 1286: Take a break

Take a break, my dear readers, and ask yourself this question: Do you need to take a break from anything, as you’re reading this blog post?

I definitely need to take a break, from

• worry,
• fear,
• low-grade fevers,
• assumptions,
• judgment,
• disrespect,
• disappointment,
• stress,
• tension,
• anxiety,
• shame,
• impatience,
• pefectionism,
• an over-developed sense of responsibility, and
• the thirteen all-too-human cognitive distortions, including blaming, comparisons, shoulds, labeling, personalization, all-or-nothing thinking, mind-reading, fortune-telling, and catastrophizing.

I took a break, yesterday, from negative assumptions about cardiac  surgeons (based on some difficult past experiences), when I spoke on the phone to Dr. Joe Dearani from the Mayo Clinic. Dr. Dearani is going to break into my very unusual heart on September 21 to replace my severely leaky valve with a mechanical valve, so that my doctors and I can take a break from concerns about deterioration of my heart’s pumping ability. Dr. Dearani told me that he takes a break from work, sometimes, by visiting my hometown of Boston, because  a lot of his relatives live in the New England area.

After I spoke with Dr. Dearani,  I was able to take a break and truly relax, for the first time in quite a while.

Yesterday, I took short breaks throughout the day to take some take-a-break photos:

 

 

I also took a break from wondering why this photo, from yesterday’s blog post, has gotten absolutely no comments from any of my readers:

What music do you think would help us all take a break in this post?

Because I have not been able to take a break from my fascination with Hamilton, I’m including this link to “Take a Break,” from that break-through musical.

I just took another  break to watch this on YouTube:

 

When I had my first heart surgery when I was 10 years old, I took a valuable break by watching “The Price is Right” in the hospital, a few days after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. I  remember taking a break, all by myself, laughing until it hurt about the weird ugliness of the car they were giving away that day. (A Jaguar, no less, but what does a 10-year-old girl know about cool cars?)

Do you think you have time to take a break today and leave a comment for this post?

I would never take a break from expressing  gratitude to all those who help me create these posts and to you — of course! — for reading them.