Returning to Work After The Holidays - Slowly Does It.

Today is the first day back to work after having four days off in a row (the weekend and two paid holidays). I finally felt yesterday evening that my batteries had been recharged. I had experienced a very stressful month at work in December, dealing with two less people at work, year end, dealing with auditors, training someone to be my backup (the previous backup just left), and two short months in a row. Along with my full time job, I also have been working a part time retail job (5-10 hours a week) for the last 5 years.

I'd been putting in lots of hours, feeling that I have all the weight of responsibility on my shoulders, resenting the responsibility, but knowing that I don't have enough money saved to choose another line of work right now. I appreciate that I will use the overtime pay to put towards paying off my bills, but all of this work is leaving me drained, and feeling that I had no time for creativity. I want to do more projects and art, but I can feel so drained and overwhelmed that I just veg out.

Still, at night I had been reading some interesting blogs, looking for some inspiration. Recently I read a blog that helped me feel that I wasn't wrong for feeling so overwhelmed. Check out this article by Zen Habits:

Zen Habit's article is about the need for humans to slow down, to give ourselves a small amount of time during our overstressed, multitasking day to just reflect, to breathe, and to enjoy what we eat for sustenance as well as nourishment. The high point of my work days are lunch time. There are a group of us, self named "Lunch Club", and the only rule of Lunch Club (a take off of "Fight Club") is that no one can talk about work during lunch. Everything else is fair game. There is such a good mix of people at lunch club that there are any number of topics brought up. It really is a good tension reliever to be able to laugh and forget the emails and phone messeges waiting for you when you get back to your desk.

I'm going to try to mindfully incorporate some of these ideas into my hectic days. Maybe even do some yoga stretches, too! Hopefully I can sometime soon find the right balance of work and creativity in my life. And I don't even have kids! I don't know how all of you parents do it!


ref: Zenhabits