Today, I wanted to take a look back at my end-of-the-year vacation.  Reminisce a little.  Romanticize about another one.  Cause I’m definitely ready for another vacation.

Three days of work into the new year and I’m counting the days to my next vacation already.  This last one was… well, shorter than I planned.

I spent the first two days of it finishing up an install for a client and assisting another consultant with troubleshooting issues at another client.

I spent the last 4-5 days of it sick from allergies due to a massive pollen storm here in Austin.

In-between all that, I met up with family and friends in Houston, got some good tequila in me, enjoyed a tasty burger from Beck’s Prime, cooked the Christmas (Eve) dinner, and cleaned out/reorganized my office.  Well, mostly on that last one… allergy attacks sort of slowed that down.

Overall, I got to truly enjoy about 8 days of a 14 day vacation.  That means I got 57% of my relaxing, recharging and revitalization in… and my depleted brain jellies from some major work overload during the last few months of last year needed at least another 20-30% of that to fully recover.

So, I’m working and putting in as much effort as I can with the day job.  But I spent all Monday working through sickness (and lunch-time at the doctor’s) and then spent Monday and Tuesday night with insomnia due to a medicine reaction.  So, tasks that were second nature to me before where I could speed right through them with no issues… well, they’re not going as planned this week. 

That’s not the kind of slowdown you want to hit when you start the first week of the work year with 70+ hours of work on your schedule.  It’s not the kind of slowdown I ever like to hit with anything I work on.  But right now, it’s the best effort I can put forth… recovering from illness and taking extra precautions because I’m afraid my subconscious is still back there all twitchy finger on the vacation button in my brain.

Deep down though… I know I’ll get through it.  I’ve encountered weeks like this before and the best thing is to persevere and keep pushing forward.  Just keep making progress.  It may feel like I’m trudging uphill to the top of a mountain made of quicksand sometimes, but the work still needs to get done.

And now that my 15 minutes of writing are up… I’m getting back to getting it done.