18 Jun 2016

A Well Deserved Break

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I learned what work/life balance actually meant when I started working in the Bay Area back in 2013 (it’s a thing here apparently), but I can promise you that this was probably something that I had never practiced in my life even before that. I was thinking about writing this post while on the plane home this afternoon about to head out on my week-long vacation and the best photo that I could think of to accompany this post was the one above.

During my senior year, I was organizing a music festival for my university along with my partner and this was in the final last week stretch! I was in between classes in my events office, but honestly I spent all of my free time here anyways. In that last week, Charles and I were getting zero sleep. Any free minute we had was working out of the office and making sure everything was ready. I like to think that I was pretty crafty by making this “bed” out of two office chairs, but really this is just a prime example of how much of a mess I was! A coworker of mine managed to catch this while I was taking a cat nap. Luckily, we don’t do stuff like this today because I like to think that I’m sort of maturing into my adulthood and sleeping in my real bed when I need a nap, but the seriousness of not having work/life balance started a long time ago for me.

Sometimes, we take the breaks we need when they are too late – when we’re already burnt out and exhausted from our work. After I told a former manager of mine that I never felt like I had the opportunity to travel much because I was always working, she suggested I set a goal for myself. Every month, I should get away. It may be a trip back home, a trip elsewhere to see friends, or a day trip – whatever it was, it needed to happen once a month. This is something that I have sort of accidentally done this year in 2016 without even realizing it. It just so happens that all of my trips have occurred every month and with half of the year already under my belt, the next six months sound promising! I can already tell how positive this has been on my life because every month – at least once a month – we get to reset for a little bit. 🙂