Do I Sound Like That?

Inspirational song: Do You Feel Like I Do? (Peter Frampton)

This might be the dumbest question I've ever felt compelled to ask in my writing, but here goes anyway. Do I seem unusually busy? Like all of the time? In the last few weeks, a large number of people, some very close friends and some people I only met recently, have commented that I always have a ridiculous amount of stuff going on. I don't know that I fully knew that I came across that way. I don't lie, and I dislike trying to hide my goings-on. (I wouldn't be writing this stuff every night otherwise, and I have never made anything up here without an acknowledgement that it was fiction, whether it was any good or not.) I am always thinking about what stories I can tell here, so I pay attention to what I'm doing, and I carry on conversations with friends and strangers alike about just about anything that seems relevant at the time in order to hone my banter. But it doesn't feel like I'm doing all that much, even when I feel overwhelmed and out of time.

I'm painfully aware of the limitations on my energy and focus as my health issues have evolved. When I get tired, I get sloppy with my memory and organizational skills. I'm also very self-conscious of coming across as lazy. I feel mountains of guilt whenever I take the time to rest, because I feel there is pressure on me to keep going, to do every-freaking-thing-ever, all by hand, all myself, all from scratch. My Martha Stewart impulses didn't go away when I came to understand that I wasn't healthy. If I spend most of a day sitting around, watching television, I still consider that to be lost time. If I don't also make something with my hands, or put out a newsletter, or anything else at the same time, it feels like wasted time. It's usually wasted time. This makes me more tense overall, and wipes out all the healing value of the rest in the first place.

What would make more sense? Slowing down the amount of tasks and projects I take on, which might help me rest but would make me even more conscious of checking out of life, or continuing to do the things that make me feel valuable but tired and stressed out? I'm not sure either option is good.