Blink and you’ll miss it

I can’t believe it’s the end of summer already!  It has truly gone by in the blink of an eye.  I have wanted to blog at various points over the summer, however the IT policies on my new work computer have had me a bit paranoid, so I ended up buying an iPad on my last trip to the US and now here I am, free to write again.

Work has been going well - I still go through periods of wondering whether or not I can do this, but things are slowly progressing. And I may possibly be in the honeymoon phase still, but I am definitely enjoying only having one phone to deal with, no more early/late meetings or phone calls, being able to actually wear my wedding ring daily and have decent nails for longer than a week at a time.

After having basically been on-call 24/7 for twelve years, it has also been extremely liberating to not be tied to my phone. As poor C can attest, with the exception of our honeymoon, I have literally not been more than 5 feet from my phone(s) since well before we met. It has taken me weeks to be able to leave the room and not take my phone with me, for fear of missing a phone call. Even now I sometimes have brief moments of panic of ‘Where’s my phone??’.

I was listening to a podcast the other day and the guest was Tim Ferris, author of the ‘4 hour work week’, amongst other books. I typically find him interesting, and in this particular interview, he was talking about how his whole empire came about.  He was explaining that he was so caught up in his job, working crazy hours, thinking only about work, etc until one day he realized he was « trapped in a machine of his own making ».  And I immediately thought ‘Bingo’.  That in a nutshell is exactly how I felt at the end of my time with The Company.  It just consumed so much of life, both day and night.

There were a lot of circumstances that contributed to it, including the time difference and my desire to move up the ranks, but at the end of the day, it really wasn’t anyone’s fault but my own that I found myself in that endless cycle of eating, breathing and sleeping work.  There was no pressure from my boss nor my colleagues - it was just a combination of my personality, the sense of urgency that came with the nature of our work and perceived responsibility towards our customers.  So I’ve been taking time this summer to reflect on how I got to that point and what I can do in the future to stay more balanced (it helps with this new job that nothing will potentially die if I don’t immediately pick up the phone lol).

But it means I’ve had space in my life to actually *have* a life again. I have been able to go out with friends more, pick up some hobbies again, and enjoy being more present with C (who also finished his masters this summer, whoop!).

I have also been enjoying traveling back to the US more frequently, and recently even attended my high school class reunion.  It was a strange experience, and it felt like many people in my hometown were vying to be on People of Walmart (seriously- it was like ‘Ah, *these* are the people who still support Trump), but I was glad to have been able to attend.  My hometown might not have been glamorous, but it was a good place to grow up.

And now September is going to be a crazy month - C will be in the US for work for 3 weeks, and I’ll be in Japan, Bretagne and the US during that same time.  We haven’t ever been apart for that long, so I’m hoping we can rendezvous for at least a weekend in there.  But in the meantime, we’re enjoying these last few days of calm together and will top it off with a weekend on C’s land.  More to come about that later...