This was taken yesterday morning. It was the first bread I’ve baked since October 14 or so. It feels good to get back in my routine (and to know my starter survived), but as I type this on Monday morning, there’s this big routine called work that’s looming.

The trip to Iceland was one of the first vacation I can remember in years during which I was fully unplugged from my day job. I turned off my work email from my phone and tried to simply embrace the moments as they presented themselves. I still dabbled in the social media, but tried to hold back from photo-flooding my friends. It must have worked as a friend complained to me I didn’t share enough photos. Here I thought I was walking the edge of oversharing. All in all, the trip had a good balance of being present and not carrying a extra suitcase of stress.

As I go back to the office today, I am going to do my darnedest to let work just be work and embrace my life outside my 9-to-5 (which really has been a 9-to-7:45). Friends, dogs, cooking, knitting, reading and running bring so much more to my world than stressing about what is or isn’t happening when I’m not staring at a monitor. I’m grateful to have a job at a company I love and with people I enjoy. My biggest life-balance challenge can be myself.

Let’s hope I learned a thing or two on vacation. Here’s to better routines.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 5th, 2012 at 7:20 am and is filed under life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.