My Self Care During Job’s Outages

Front cover of my Outage Thrive Kit; inside page of the last Outage Thrive Kit, circa October, 2020; back cover of Outage Thrive Kit

Front cover of my Outage Thrive Kit; inside page of the last Outage Thrive Kit, circa October, 2020; back cover of Outage Thrive Kit

Front cover of my Outage Thrive Kit; inside page of the last Outage Thrive Kit, circa October, 2020; back cover of Outage Thrive Kit

If I were still at my job, I would be working an outage RIGHT NOW. 

I’m not going to explain any nuclear power vocabulary here at all. 

I’ll just say outages require all employees to work six days weekly, for a minimum of 12.5 hours daily. Add the commute time to all of these daily hours. Outage duration might be three weeks or longer, dependent on scheduled work, etc. All outages add up to very exhausted employees. 

I was one of those glazed eyed, unhappy, exhausted, trudging, trying to do my best, miserably scared of getting sick employees. I was barely conscious of my birthday and Halloween...I was barely conscious at all. My days were drive to job, do my best at job, drive home, do a couple of chores, try to enjoy time with Andy, and go to bed! 

​Quite a few outages ago, artist Carol Trice was having to work some overtime for her job industry. She made up a book similar to this one, with sticker rewards. 

I adore stickers. I copied Carol’s idea. 

This was one of the few ways I could still feel like me...adding reward stickers to my calendar day. To earn a sticker, I had to spend at least five minutes on that option. Those minutes were precious. 

Yes, I had a Must Do List, too. When Andy and I had to work outages, I printed systems for myself and worked them. All of the lists got stickers. Andy rolled his eyes, but I had my list and our outages ran smoother. 
I threw out this book this year!!! I kept my collected leftover Halloween stickers, because, I love stickers, lol! 

I kept my instructions for how to make and use another book like this. I prefer to abandon ever needing a book like this again, but life is weird. Maybe I’ll make one for doing art biz things? Hmm…! 

If you need a thrive kit like this, I’m happy to share my instructions. Step one is get some great, happy, fun, bright stickers like you can find at Dollar Trees in the US. The stickers can be any theme of your choice. You could do like old school and stick to gold stars, too. Next steps are find a cover, make a list, repeat and print the list. 

Pura vida from Costa Rica, where I’m figuring out what’s next!