A break well deserved
Somehow, I did not realise the Easter weekend was 5-days long until I was almost 48 hours into it. But the moment the rays of that light bulb shone through, I suddenly felt an immense surge of calm as an almost holiday-length break forced itself upon me and I had every single reason to run errands, do nothing, and most of all breathe a sigh of relief and not check my email (almost - I still had to do a daily digest for a client).
With the pandemic (also how many sentences have started with this phrase or some form of in the past year?), ironically none of us really have been able to take any downtime. Compared to 2019-2020 where I’ve been on about 4-5 trips, 2020-2021 has been a tough break, but never really a chance for a hiatus. Working for 12 months straight, between new projects and old clients, hobbies and social obligations, even a self-proclaimed extroverted-introvert like me felt the burnout and exhaustion. Not to mention, a lot of people don’t actually normalise or verbalise the trauma that the past year has brought. Death of loved ones, being apart from your closest, businesses and ideas on the verge of closing down, politics, hate crime, the world trying not to fall apart… It is a lot to grapple with. It brings me anxiety just trying to re-cap the massive shifts we collectively had to live through.
Of course, by the time this short hiatus came to a close I was grasping for every last moment, wishing it would not end. I went outside, explored new places, spent time with family and my partner, and most of all had a lot of idle time to just hang out by myself. There’s of course a laundry list of things I wish I had done: MarieKon-ed the house further (somehow in my fantasy I will have about 50% less stuff than I do now), studied, read, meditated, stretched… All things I never had time for in my day-to-day life. I was, and still am, so unwilling to dive head-first into work and my half-baked routine of anxiety and stress.
This break alone gave me a taste of what scheduled rest feels like, and I don’t hate it one bit. I know you’re meant to plan your life so that you won’t feel this burning desire to spend all your month’s pay on a grand holiday, but honestly — holidays are the tits. So give me more chances to ignore my inbox and stomp around town in the sun please, weekends are just a tease.