This holiday week has been exceptionally busy. After touching down here last Friday, I was off to Malaysia for a weekend trip and that, of course, was tiring in itself. Following that, I had more family coming in and of course, lots of family outings day in and day out to all the shopping hot spots, sight seeing hot spots etc – you know the drill.
The biggest difference was that this time, I consciously forked out time for myself. Unlike university days, I’ve got to be back at work on Monday morning in a different timezone, so there’s a fair amount of admin work needing completion these holidays. And given my introverted nature, I also need sufficient non-people time to recharge. I had to make tons of compromises of course – many items on the ‘to-do’ list were pushed to January thanks to lower priority and I had to cut down my ‘to-meet’ list of friends to a bare minimum as well and push the rest of the meetings to my next trip down here, and of course, I’m having to not think about football either.
All the trade offs aside, all the high priority admin work has been done, quality time has been spent with family, a couple of meet ups have been planned and I know there’s rest and relaxation waiting for me the entire weekend. It’s been a big learning in managing myself and my happiness – putting myself as the highest priority and ensuring the holiday season stays at the ‘enjoyable’ and not ‘stressful’. Fine line, as always..
Oh, and I also managed to catch a Man United game last night – sign of a healthy holiday!
If we don’t help ourselves, who will after all?
A Learning a Day 