Reflections on working too much

Walking along the coast today, reflecting on the book I just published, I found myself working out the next book's structure in my head when a raven came up and told me to knock it off and to just look at the mist on the water. Needless to say, I told the raven to mind its own business, but took the advise all the same. And it turns out the mist coming off the water was amazing.

As I proceeded with my daily walk, the incident got me thinking about how to avoid becoming overworked when my ongoing existence depends on excessive productivity whenever possible to offset the many months of zero productivity produced by my medical situation each year. Having worked myself into such a frenzy of toxic, sleepless delirium in December that I had to be hospitalized on New Years, this is a question that I've been looking at quite a lot these last several weeks.

Have I come up with a good answer to this question? Not really.

The problem is that costly and time-consuming special needs unavoidably come along with the headache disorder I live with. Over the years, the only reliably way I've found to address this problem is by working like a maniac whenever humanly possible. But, as recent events prove, this previously-effective strategy for addressing this problem is not sustainable. Rather, it can be dangerously unhealthy.

Of course, I'm perfectly capable of spending my days looking at mist or investigating interesting mossy logs or whatever, but only insofar as all the work that I can think of to do has already been done. And I have yet to come up with a good strategy for avoiding over-working when financially under the gun. Ideas, anyone?