“Dumb and Dumber like it’s the first one” is a character test I use with people to see if we will get along. Perhaps my favorite comedy of all time and one of my favorite scenes is this here.
And so that kind of describes exactly what it was like from the 6th February until the 6th May this year, it did get a little bit nippy going through the pass.
The time off work was many things but one of the things was a test to see how bad for my health work actually is, and the confirmation was those three months, from February to May. I went to some great places and did some great things. Met some great people and some not so great people. But the truth is that the balance that I so desperately seek is unachievable in that kind of schedule. My fault and my fault alone I did not and could not see the impact of where I was going, what I was doing and what effect that would have both on the work and the life at home, but demonstrated most subjectively by my fitness. If I were to look at the numbers, and the way I measure how fit I am in conjunction with my coach Simon McCarthy, I would be almost 30% down than at the end of January as I am now, in a situation were I should be 30% up. (A net 60% loss) Its not rocket science to think that you can train a lot better when your not working and don’t have a mobile phone than when your running around like an idiot. But one the main purposes for taking the time off work was to show myself or remind self or prove to myself that If I do intend to go along way until the later stages of my life continuing to work than I better balance has to be achieved.
For now though, the start of May, my annual cycle into the different phase. Work outside of the practice decreases considerable. Time to spend administratively, planning, scheming and in content creation is fantastic and its now less than 8 weeks until the big crazy event in the Alps with me and my friend, David. Its taken me a long time to realise that my life is cyclical through the year. January to May is mental. May to October is wonderful. October up until the middle of December is mental and the middle of December until the start of January is wonderful. It is possible to extend those periods of wonderful to get into the mental and also possible to take the heat out of the mental. One of the ways in which I’ve done this is by booking the time off work again from the 20th December to the 5th February. This time though I wont write about it, not too much anyway. This time I will do it better. Plan it better. Execute it better. And prove the return to work.
Harry and Lloyd (from Dumb and Dumber) survived though, it was a bit nippy going through the pass. They were stuck together because Harry did a pee on Lloyds back and it froze and they stuck but in the end despite the difficult it worked out ok. Yes its important to remember that we have to go through the nippy bits to see the good bits.
Blog Post Number - 1276
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