efozzie

Got free tickets to the SF Giants baseball game vs. Cincinnati Reds, so Jed and I took a little afternoon trip to AT&T Park to watch the game.

We got there at the 3rd inning because our bus was 45 minutes late, and then we grabbed some delicious ballpark food (I had the chicken tenders and garlic fries, and Jed got a hotdog and coke). The only thing I wanted to do was go to the game, eat, hang out, soak in the environment and then take a couple pictures. So we did that, and then left at the 7th inning and went across the street to Borders to read magazines. What a chill afternoon.

Jed, my new roommate since my brother moved back to Vegas, told me that my energy was being sucked away because my bed was facing my mirrors and behind it is my window. Direct vortex of energy-suction.

Could this energy-sucking vortex be attributed to why I've been so low energy lately? Hmm, could be, but it's probably also because I haven't been to the gym and have been eating crappy food.

So anyway, to alleviate the situation, we moved my bed to where my desk was and vice versa, and with my snazzy new camera, I took a picture for your viewing pleasure.

Changing where I sleep is just a little part of how I'm going to make a change... any other ideas?

Last week I literally put my whole entire life on hold for work. I somehow got it in my head that my program would not work unless I devoted my whole entire week to it, night and day.

What a mistake.

But to my own credit, I didn't have a choice. It was either let the program suffer or do the work necessary to make it work out. I chose the latter because I am dedicated to my students and my only reason for being at this organization is for the students.

However, recently I have been confronted with a new concept: work/life balance. I don't really understand what this means, but slowly, since some of my coworkers are all about it, I am learning more about it. See, I come from a working culture where everyone works 100% all the time to accomplish a goal no matter what the price, and on top of that people were not paid, it was all volunteer. And now I am getting paid for doing what I love to do, and although it is pretty much in the same vein of what I have done before, it is different because I have to take staff work/life balance into consideration.

And to top it all off, I have to take my own personal work/life balance into consideration. Being surrounded by libras (my parents, Jo, Jed), I know all about balance, but need help in achieving it.

This was my last 2 weeks:

8/7-8 - 2 days of Business Boot Camp for our juniors
8/9 - 1 day of working on logistics for the week after
8/10-13 - off to 4 days of College Summit (days that started at 7 am and ended at 2 am)
8/14 - right after that I had a training day for our Executive Leadership Circle
8/14-18 - followed by 4 days of Business Boot Camp for our sophomores.

My last 5 days started at 6 am and ended at midnight. I was on all day long with no breaks, barely any time to eat because I was supervising 45 students every minute with barely any help. When I got home, all I wanted to do was vegg, but I had to prepare for the next day or the day after that.

What suffered:

I didn't get to go to the gym at all
I was eating horrible food
I wasn't replying to work or personal email
I was barely replying to phone calls
I came home every day emotionally drained
I came home defeated after listening to staffmembers give feedback about how to do it better (and all I could hear was "This sucked," "It was bad, this is how you can do it better," etc.)
I broke down, not once, not twice, but yes, three times

This is the first time in a whole year that I've ever felt like I couldn't do this job, and that's not right, especially since 11 out of the 12 months that I have worked there, I have rocked at it (to put it humbly).

Moral of the story: It's OK to love your job (because I still do love my job). But when your job and you start to have a codependent and hurtful relationship, it's time to change something up.

So I'm going to change it up a bit. How? I don't know yet. But I will.