To be honest, I'm not proud of how I managed my annual vacations. Time off should be exactly that! Time Off! But when you have a team of 14 who relies on you to make sure their best interests are taken care off, you can't just go away. I rather have to deal with not being totally rest and still feeling lack of energy than to come back to work knowing I was not able to be the one taking important decisions which will/would impact my team.
Each time I am able to help them, recognise their work, witness their achievements and success or simply spend some time listening to them, I know this is the career I wanted to have. This is what I love doing. This is me!
Don't get me wrong, it's not ALWAYS fun-fun! I have some frustrated days where I am tired of going from meeting to meeting, doing tons of admin work and at the end of the day feel like crap. But overall, if I could put all of my working days in a balance, the positive would be tremendously more heavy than the negative.
During this 2 weeks break, I had to attend a couple of meetings, needed to check some emails, worked on some excel files, dealt with some frustrations (work related) and decided who would get some promotions/raises. All of that while I had to be with my family, enjoying my time with them and attending to everyone's needs.
I ask myself, is this a symptom of being a workaholic? Am I the only one who is not able to stop working? I read a lot about Mental Health, Life Balance and so on, but the truth, at least for me, is that most of it I am not able to apply on my daily routines.
I promise myself I'll start dedicating more time to me almost everyday, to end up in the kitchen making dinner and lying down on the couch before I just go to bed (while I swear tomorrow will be different).
Today is no different! I made an agreement with myself that I'm gonna start walking 30mns every morning and that I'm going back to yoga twice a week. This time I really need to keep up to it.
I can't keep on investing all of my time on work and family while the "ME CAPITAL" continues to decrease.
To be a good leader I must be at my best and, for that to happen, I need to be healthy, both physically and mentally.
After all, it is nothing but MY CHOICE!
