I have my life back.
For the last few months, I've been working incesstantly due to an urgent deadline. I got my monthly utilization report yesterday and let's just say the numbers ain't pretty. As a consequence, I pretty much put life on hold as I was working through this deadline - I haven't touched my GMAT book in months. My house was a mess. I hadn't cooked or eaten home in a month (I'm sure I have health issues from that). I saw people outside of work only a handful of times in the last few months. I haven't shopped in ages.
But all that's over now, at least for a bit. Yesterday, I had my first day off in ages. I slept, cleaned, played FF12 lots and basicially did not think about work or feel guilty about not thinking about work. It was fantastic. My goal for this week is to cut back on starbucks and coffee, eat home cooked food, play games, buy clothes and basically breathe. My goal for this month is to reduce my utilization down to 100%.
I would say 80% but I know myself too well. Somewhere between high-school and college, I somehow developed a work ethic. I used to be the kid whose parent teacher meetings usually went like this "Your daughter could be doing so much better if she would only work harder. You know she has the potential to be topping the class" and whose parents usually ended up yelling some place close to the exams "You can't be done studying, you've only spent half an hour on your books so far". If those teachers had seen me in college....
I don't know what happened exactly. I think that I don't respond well to nagging and have a very short attention span. If I'm allowed to manage my own time, I usually do much better and provide much better discipline on myself than when I'm being managed. But now that I'm out in the real world, in a job where I do most of my own time management, I'm somehow putting in an effort. I wouldn't say my best effort yet because I know somewhere in me there are resources I haven't drawn on yet and haven't needed to draw on. Nor.. I think does anybody want/need me to draw on those. The consequence of working at 200% is frequently burnout.
For now, I think, I'm going to enjoy the rest of this month and the spend the hiatus putting my life back together again.
