This past week the dude and I have been on holiday. We’ve eaten delicious food shared by generous hosts, picked up new shows (Nashville, anyone?), spent lazy mornings reading and had too much coffee nearly every day. It’s been a welcome and much needed holiday.
Which is why things have been kind of quiet around here.
I want to be a person who enjoys life. Who spends long hours with people, notices beauty and celebrates it, and really experiences they things they are experiencing.
But I find it more difficult than I’d like to admit. I’m an A type personality who truly enjoys feeling productive. Too much down-time makes me (mentally) feel a little stir-crazy. And I really dislike getting home from a holiday and feeling “behind.” Facing hundreds of emails in my inbox and late-fee laden past-due tasks paralyzes me. And as I get grumpy when I’m hungry, having no food in the house definitely doesn’t help.
But slowing down is important to me. Which means I have to regularly practice if I want to grow in this area.
So this this time around, I’m spending a little time each day on things I suspect will make the biggest difference when transitioning back to real life, and then tapping out. And blog posts have been few.
This is a little hard for me. I’ve mentioned before that I feel like a failure when I don’t meet my own aims and expectations. But I also realize that if I want to live a life rich in relationships that is awake to the mystery and wonder of each day, I have to practice turning things off.
As I work toward that, things are a bit quiet around here.
Does anyone else have trouble balancing down-time on holiday with not being insane when they return? How do you manage it?
I get the whole live-life philosophy and I whole heartedly get it. I think it has become too commonplace to “experience” life through social media, phone screens, cameras, etc. and not actually enjoy the present moment being fully there. Kudos to you & enjoy the holiday! When all is said and done, no amount of any to-do list can fulfill you like enjoying the moment with the one(s) you love!
bianca recently posted..15 minute black bean soup
I’m so with you here Amber, what with smart phones, tablets and all the other mobile contraptions, we never seem to really get away – I remember going on holiday and completely shutting off, nowadays that doesn’t seem to be the case, it’s a shame.
I get antsy if my email messages mount up, but equally irritated if I ignore them… I am unsure of how to find the balance. But making sure there is a nice bottle of wine in the fridge and the makings for a bowl of pasta in the cupboard on my return, sure makes tackling them messages a lot less painful!
Sarah recently posted..My Kick-Ass Pepperoni Pizza Burger