A little about my ‘Mental Health Break’

From July 16th until August 18th I was off on a bit of a ‘mental health break’ as I like to call it.

During that time I only was working for 2 of my 5 seasonal contracts – and it was awesome. I totally needed it – especially the break from my ‘big’ or ‘main’ contract.

Well, it’s been over for a week now and I’m really happy I had that time – it was awesome working only a couple hours a day, for 5 days a week rather than working the 6-10 hours a day I was working 7 days a week. Ahhh.

I really imagined I’d be lounging by the pool, reading books, seeing friends, golfing, taking the dogs for walks everyday and catching up on yard and house work… mostly that didn’t happen.

Why? We were gone to Quebec and PEI for 11 days. I was in Pennsylvania for 5 days (for a retreat for my ‘main’ contract, where we worked on the future of the business, ate and drank well) – so that really took up a good part of my break.

I did spend one week-end fully on the couch – officially doing nothing but reading, watching movies and playing video games – well, I felt like such a sloth I immediately went on a cleaning bender – which was a good thing.

I realized that one of the things that drive me nuts when I’m feeling overwhelmed by work stuffs is the condition of the house – so I attacked the kitchen cupboards inside and out, cleaned out the fridges, the bar, the disaster of a laundry closet, etc. There are still a few things I’d like to accomplish (clean out parts of the garden, the garage, and do a tiny bit of landscaping work in the backyard), but I feel so much better.

It’s a bit of a bonus for me that I am only working 3 contracts right now. One contract (which I’m not sure if is going to continue) is on hold until after Labour Day week-end (when his schedule returns to normal with his children back in school) and the other contract depends on the guy sending me pictures of what he’s working on, and he’s pretty much been working on only one huge industrial contract – not very good for social media – so that one’s on hold for maybe another month or two.

I learned a lot about myself on this little break – and I’m working on moving forward with work and life with better time management, organization and prioritization skills – all while living an awesome ‘offline’ life.

Which, indeed, is good.

Thanks for listening.