Well, ladies
I am writing this from my kitchen table on a Saturday morning because I agreed to prep a board deck that is not due until Wednesday, for a meeting I did not need to volunteer for, because someone asked me in front of other people and I said yes before the sentence was over.
Nobody made me. Nobody pressured me. The ask came with a perfectly acceptable out and I walked straight past it because I heard a gap and I filled it. That is what I do. I fill gaps. Then I resent the gaps. 😤
This is not about the deck. The deck is fine. Thirty slides, half of them already built. Two hours of work, maybe three. The problem is that I gave away my Saturday and I have been sitting here since 7 AM cycling between twelve open tabs and actually reading none of them.
My focus has been gone since about Thursday. Not tired. Not sick. Just blurred. I would read a paragraph and get to the bottom and realize I retained nothing. Emails I had to read three times. A report I started, walked away from, came back to, walked away from again. By Friday afternoon I was staring at a slide deck like it was written in a language I used to speak.
I know what this is because it happens every six weeks or so and every time I am surprised by it, which is its own problem. It is dehydration plus overscheduling plus not enough actual pauses between tasks. My brain does not crash because it is failing. It crashes because I run it from 6 AM to 11 PM with no gap that is not also a task.
Dani told me about her floor-press thing last week. Feet flat, press hard, release. I did it Thursday before the board prep call because my legs were restless and I could not sit still. It worked for the tension.
But something else happened that I did not expect: after I released, my vision cleared. Not dramatically. Just enough that the slide I had been staring at for twenty minutes suddenly made sense again. Like my eyes had been holding the same tension my feet were. 💪
That sent me looking for something similar but for the head specifically, and here is what I found. When your focus drops, pinch the bridge of your nose between your thumb and finger. Firm pressure. Hold it for ten seconds with your eyes closed. Then release.
It works on the trigeminal nerve, which runs sensation across your entire face and feeds back into your brainstem's alertness circuits. The pressure and release acts like a small reset. Not a miracle. Not caffeine. But the fog lifts enough to get through the next thirty minutes with your actual brain instead of the blurred version.
I have done it four times since Thursday. Twice during the deck. Once in the car. Once this morning when I sat down and could not start. It is ten seconds and it costs nothing and nobody around you even knows you are doing it. ✅
Sonia sent me a text about some documentary she finished and I have not responded yet because I am sitting in my own Saturday that I gave away and I do not have the bandwidth to be moved by anything right now. I will watch it. Not today.
Today is the deck. Then I am closing the laptop and I am not opening it again until Monday, which is a promise I make to myself roughly once a month and keep about half the time.
Pinch the bridge of your nose. Ten seconds. Eyes closed. Try it before you decide it is too simple to work. 🏃♀️
