It was a bit hard thinking of a title for this post today. It's been a bit of a struggle to write this post today. In fact, I think it would be safe to say that everything so far this morning has been quite the struggle.
While many people consider "winding down" to be something you do at the end of the day, or the end of the week, I'm pretty close to reaching that "winding down" phase with the end of my career. Nobody knows what the future holds of course, and in the grand scheme of things, I still have at least three years left. However, when you look at a thirty year career, only have three years left definitely puts you on the winding down side of work.
This past holiday break, it worked out so that each weekend was a four day weekend for me. Since Christmas Eve/Christmas and New Years Eve/New Years fell on Saturday and Sunday, we got Friday and Monday off. I can't tell you the last time I was off four consecutive days in a row. It's been a while for sure. Probably sometime around Spring Break last year.
Even when you are on vacation, it isn't always that relaxing. While I may have had four days off in a row, those days were filled with travel, running, to-do lists, and other manner of things. The Christmas weekend was the same way this year. We were back and forth between family and friends, it was a pretty busy time.
That's part of the reason I decided New Years was going to be different. Barring a few small things, we did pretty much nothing over the four day weekend.
That's where the problem lies.
Do you ever feel guilty when you finally decide to give yourself a break? It's time you know you need, and yet when you finally take it, you feel like you should be doing all these other things. We have this mentality that doing nothing is a bad thing.
I got some hints of that this past weekend. I'd be laying on the couch and think "I should be doing...". Why do we feel that way?
Then we have this morning. Alarm going off at 4:00 AM to get up and workout before work. The past four days I have been lucky to be out of bed before 8:00. I knew that 4 AM alarm this morning was going to be a punch in the gut, but not quite this bad.
It's slowly becoming clear to me that this is a part of my life that I am kind of ready to be done with. Which is a dangerous thing. Who knew winding down could be such a dangerous thing?
First, I need to ensure that my work doesn't suffer because of it. As much as my mind is ready to check out from all of this, there are still people who depend on me. Plus, as I said, life is unexpected. One major disaster or turn of events could have me working for another ten years. Burning bridges now is the last thing I should be doing no matter how much I want to be winding down.
Second, let's say things do go according to plan and it's a three year wind down period. Then what? How do I strike that balance between enjoying the time off I have earned and still feeling like a productive member of society?
I guess the good news is, I at least have three years to figure it out right?
Three more years of 4 AM mornings...
Wish me luck!
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