I know my life is very #blessed.
I work for an incredible organisation, and I’m so proud of everything that we achieve – but that doesn’t mean that the daily grind doesn’t occasionally get the best of me.
For 18 months I postponed taking a holiday, arguing that I was “furthering my career”. In actual fact, I was doing the complete opposite. I was burning myself out, and I was blaming work for the miserable feeling I felt when my alarm went off every morning.
After a bit of a push from concerned friends and family, I agreed to take a week off before Christmas. It took that single week to remember 5 important things about my life, I’m sure lots of other Adeladies will relate to.
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1. My family is bloody hilarious. We’ve always been close, but the past few months have seen me rushing in and out of family time to get to something “more important”. Sitting on the deck with my parents, my brother, and our four legged pal Billy, glass of bubbles in hand – I couldn’t remember the last time I had laughed till I cried. How could I possibly have forgotten how awesome my bizarre family is?
2. Home cooked dinners. After a crazy couple of months of late nights at work and too many functions to count, I hadn’t cooked in far too long. In celebration of a home made lasagne for the first time in forever, I ate 3 pieces in one sitting – and I’m not even ashamed.
3. Girl chat. I’m surrounded by powerful women who will probably one day run the entire world. We all understand the concept of a “no fuss” friendship that’s full of love. Our catch ups are usually a speedy after work dinner in a crowded restaurant, so when the stars aligned and saw us all on holidays at the same time we jumped for a girls night in. There’s something so comforting in swapping personal* stories with your girlfriends, and I left feeling refreshed and empowered by the women in my life.
*think relationships, periods and pubic hair – not necessarily in that order.
4. Doing nothing is not always easy, but it’s worth it. In the first few days, it was an art that I had to relearn. Sitting around made me feel fidgety, however over the next few days it became increasingly easy. I found 2016 to be a particularly rough one (along with majority of the world, it seems) with the loss of loved ones and relationship breakdowns, so when I finally stopped and reflected on the year that was I was hit with an enormous sense of grief and subsequent closure. It’s so easy to use a busy lifestyle to distract yourself from something that hurts, but it turns out that doing nothing can sometimes actually fix everything.
5. My job is incredibly fun and exciting. Yes, in my slump I’d bitched and moaned (doesn’t everyone??) but by the end of my break I found myself making notes in my phone of new ideas and big picture plans for the New Year.
Turns out that to be re-inspired, I just needed to be reinvigorated. Who knew!
I’m so lucky to live in a society that accepts and celebrates females in the workplace, and because of that I find myself pushing to reach as many goals as humanly possible.
All it took was 1 single week to remember that NOTHING is possible without your friends, your family, your health and your sanity. Keep pushing those limits ladies, but push for your own wellbeing too.
Millie xx
