I spent two weeks on annual leave after an eight-month stretch of intense work, lockdown, parenting, homeschooling, and madness in the world. Being away from my usual surroundings, I spent some time going through what’s been happening in my life and made some decisions to maintain my sanity. A sort of early New Year’s resolutions that I actually intend to keep.
This sort of internal introspection audit led to some conclusions:
- I forgot how to relax and have fun. These two weeks were a perfect example of it. My brain kept drifting towards work and personal concerns. I interpret this as making me feel guilty for trying to have fun
- I haven’t been watching movies and shows with the same passion and frequency as before
- I haven’t been reading. At all. I used to love reading
- I haven’t been gaming. At all. I used to love gaming
- I stopped exercising altogether.
It’s a worrying trend that’s been dragging on for quite a while now. If I were to make an educated guess on when it started, I’d trace it back to about three years ago.
One of the main symptoms is an inability to focus on a single task for more than a few minutes. This has taken its toll at work as well. Lately, it’s been quite a struggle to focus on anything that’ll take me more than a few hours to address. If the task at hand involves looking up possible solutions and understanding complex concepts, it’s even worse.
Fortunately, the improvements I need to make are clear and easy to plan (in theory):
- Cut back on my work hours. Even with shorter work days due to the COVID pandemic, I’ve been keeping up with my old work schedule and it absorbs any personal time I have
- Get back into reading. As I work on my focus issue, I’m starting with small books from my kid’s library. As I pick up the pace, I’ll move to the kind of books I want to read (sci-fi, history, politics, etc.)
- Get my mojo back for movies. I used to love cinema, but it got diluted into every day’s concerns
- Find time to play games. I’ve already gone back to “Batman: Arkham Asylum” to finish the game in the hard difficulty level. I’m hoping that beating up some juiced-up Joker thugs will help release some stress
- Go on a strict diet and ramp up my physical activity to the point that it becomes a daily routine. I’m not getting any younger, so looking after myself and carefully choosing what I eat is more important than ever.
I’m dead serious when I say that these are not going to turn into the run of the mill New Year’s resolutions. I’m committing to this.