There’s a great knee-slapping Kenny Rogers song called, “The Gambler” that lives deep down in the recesses of my brain matter and usually kick starts in my brain whenever I’m close to needing a break progress of a workday. In particular, the part of the chorus begins to minister to my mind with the words…

You’ve got to know when to hold ’em
Know when to fold ’em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
You never count your money
When you’re sittin’ at the table
There’ll be time enough for countin’
When the dealin’s done

I needed those words yesterday.

I heeded those words yesterday, along with a little splish splash of actual scripture from Matthew 6:25-34 that tells us Christians about how we are supposed to deal with worry in great detail and illustration.

I know we beat up on Mondays, we have a number of songs that bemoan the start of the so called “work week”. However, yesterday wasn’t a bad day. In fact, any day I’m still breathing is a good day. Yesterday was just busy. My calendar was deceptive in the volume of planned things I had to take care of and by the time I looked up real good it was 7pm (Central) and I had to hammer down.

Fortunately, on Mondays, I have a great show on YouTube I can tune into live and watch my friend Steve Rice get his Bob Ross on. it’s become one of my rituals for toning down after a busy start of my week. Sometimes I try to follow along with my own creative take on the painting he attempts but last night I sat back and enjoyed my rather thrown together meal of salmon and pasta with a new sauce I’m rather proud of and will have to try again.

I didn’t come close to getting everything I wanted or “needed” to get done on yesterday, including the posting of this blog that is going up a day late. But that’s okay. I did my best and when I needed to rest that is precisely what I did.

This is still not natural for me, y’all. I’m a balls to the wall, push push push past the point of exhaustion to get things done kind of personality by factory default. But I reached a point in my life when I saw just how destructive those practices were to my life and the lives of those around me who rely on me and that was the motivation I needed to change and adopt healthier work-life habits.

Do you know when to stop and rest before you pass your red line? If not, take a little time today to think about how you can increase your awareness of your red life and how you can develop strategies for practicing healthier work-life habits that will keep you happy and healthy.

And if you’d like to tap into Steve’s Painting Parties you can subscribe to his channel and set notifications so you don’t miss an episode.

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I’ll see you back here next week (hopefully on Monday). Let me know in the comments how your new year is going and how you are trying to practice healthier work-life habits. Also, I’m totally open to suggestions on some topics you’d like for me to tackle this year, just drop them in the comments. I love diving into research and sharing my findings. You might have noticed that from last week in my “A King Abroad” piece I did for MLK Day. If you missed it you can click HERE to catch up.

Marta is an award winning filmmaker, writer and producer committed to sharing the rich and complex stories of America’s Heartland region.  Marta wears several hats as Chief Creative-in-Charge of MartaGwyn Productions, LLC as well as the Co-Founder and Senior Grant Writer of Youngblood and Associates, LLC and Chief Operations Officer of Marta Collier Educational Systems and Services, LLC.

Marta is also the founder and editor-in-chief of TheWRITEaddiction.  An online community of writers that publish creative and inspirational works daily at www.TheWriteAddiction.com.

Marta is an alumna of The Ohio State University and Tougaloo College with degrees in Sociology and English-Journalism and resides in Little Rock, Arkansas, with her husband and unconventional college sweetheart of 10 years, Terrance Youngblood.