Vacations are good, in fact vacations are great. Most of us had a couple of days off for Thanksgiving last month, some of us even extended to add a couple more days to get a longer vacation and soon enough we will have, at least in the USA, our winter break.
The vacation part is great, the problem is when we get back to the office after this vacation. A million emails, problems that occurred while we were gone and god knows what fires that need to be put out when we get back.
Some of us hate going on vacation or avoid the vacation for exactly this reason – the returning to work anxiety. Is this normal? Apparently it is and even has a name – Post Holiday Syndrome. A Zapier/ Harris poll from August 2020 found that 87% of us have this issue. This is not just post vacation depression, this has to do with catching up on missed work, tons of emails and phone calls we will need to tackle when we are back, fixing other peoples mistakes when we were away and for some of us it simply means that we really hate our jobs.
The internet is full of suggestions on how to deal with this and I have not seen one that said do not go on vacation, so I guess this is part of being an employed adult even if it is an unfortunate one.
Once upon a time people would finish their work day, pack up their stuff and go home. There was separation between work and home at least for most of us. Lunch time at work was sacred and you got to eat in peace and when you went home you watched TV, ate dinner with your family or just did whatever worked for you on your off hours. Granted some jobs required you to be on call or have late evenings.
Then came the pandemic and most of us went home. A lot of companies discovered that now they can have meetings galore, there is no need for everyone to be physically in the same space anymore. We can have meetings with people in other countries any time needed. Online meetings were the new god! Don’t get me wrong, not dressing up was a blessing for me and I loved the fact that I could cook when a meeting was boring. I even took advantage of the online all hours format and finally finished my MBA from an international school waking up at 5am for class.
But what happens when you work for an international company that has meetings all hours – with countries that have 10- 16 hours time differences. Some that I know have meetings scheduled for them at 7am and then again at 9pm or as my friend says, I know when China and India start working as the meets pinging starts. When do employees have a chance to decompress and relax?
This is not the only problem, employees are expected to be available at all times. If you have small children and don’t mind the weird work hours that is not a problem for you. But what happens with everyone else, the meetings keep being scheduled as everyone is supposedly available, family life is pushed to the side and balance does not exist.
Some employers are great and respect boundaries but what happens when there are no boundaries. Work life balance does not exist anymore and if anything work and those annoying meet pings on the phone become worse.
Today I had corporate training. Usually i get the notification that I have scheduled training I cringe, I hate training sessions, they are usually long, not efficient and not effective. I really do not enjoy them partially because they are on zoom and I need to be in front of the computer for way too long for my cup of tea. However, today was a first for me.
I attended the training, complaining in my mind about it and then I was pleasantly surprised. Training was good and interesting and I actually enjoyed it, which brought me to think how was this training better? Especially since this was technical IT training that usually burns my brain to a crisp.
The difference was that this session was concise, effective and to the point with real tech examples and know-how. The trainer was not going on and on just to hear her own voice like some people I know. I left the training feeling that I gained knowledge and not wasted my time on another mandated session.
So why was this online training better, for starters it started on time and there was no wait for all the late attendees. Presentation was good and showed real examples that we encountered and solutions and not some theoretical mambo jambo that does not connect to us.The session was short, effective and efficient and I personally felt that the trainer valued my time and was not doing this training just to fulfill some corporate mandate. And lastly this trainer knew how to use the technology, in this case it was Zoom. I attended a training session last week with a trainer that wasted 20 minutes of our time not knowing how to share screens or look at the chat and frankly after the last 3 years of life in zoom if you have not mastered it yet get a moderator to help you. So all in all a good start for my work day!
I was asked recently why I am starting a blog, there are many reasons. One of my friends mother passed away recently and when they organized the house later they found notebooks filled with stories and poems that the mom never showed anyone and they decided to publish them after her death, I don’t want my kids to read my notebooks after I’m dead, I want them to see them now, I want the world to see them now,
The other reason was the pandemic, in a way the pandemic made me think about my priorities and what I would like to do in the remaining years that I have. I lost my hearing during the pandemic and that added to my introspection time, I started listening to podcasts while walking the dog and discovered Mike Rowe’s podcast (yes. The Dirty Jobs guy), on several episodes he had his mother Peggy Rowe, Peggy spoke about her road to becoming on the national bestseller list and how she fulfilled her dream and all the ups and downs that led to that and that inspired me to no end.
The other reason that might seem mundane is just a simple quote from Farrah Gray “Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.” that was posted on Linkedin. This post made me stop for a second and think hard as it touched a nerve. I have worked for other people all my life, not always were my capabilities appreciated and when they were I was expected to do more for the same pay while someone else reaped the rewards. Mind you I quit from that company after I saw that my hard work was not appreciated but that belongs to a different post about toxic management.
All of these reasons plus several others that I did not mention made me think and think hard about how I would like my future to look like, i do not want to miss opportunities or reflect in years to come on how I missed them. I know many of us have the same feelings, especially after the last 3 years we had, at this point in my life I am choosing to forge ahead with a new view – I will not stop myself anymore, I will believe in my capabilities and if ever my bucket list if full I will simply get a new bucket!
We all have that dreaded back to work day, for some it’s monday, for others it’s going back to work after a vacation or a long weekend. For others it’s every day. There really is no wonder that many songs were written about Mondays and none of them positive, The Bangles have their Manic Monday , the Carpenters have Rainy days and Mondays (always make me cry – continuing lyrics) and i’m not even going to talk about the Boomtown rats – I don’t like Mondays, which is a very dark song. Does Monday morning blues have to be a Monday, probably not. By coincidence today is my day, not because it is a Monday, I work on Sundays so technically my Monday is a Sunday, instead I have meetings that I am being forced to attend with people I do not value and meetings that just drag on and on as some people just like hearing the sound of their own voice. You go to bed the night before with that terrible feeling of dreading tomorrow and wake up to the same pit feeling in your stomach.
So what do we do to make us less anxious about our “monday”? Suffer in quiet, look for a new job or be a Pollyanna and try to find the positive in this. Frankly I don’t want to be positive today, really not in the mood! But what I did instead was to find a course that looked interesting on Coursera about entrepreneurship and freelancing. Will see how my day ends.
We constantly hear about pros and cons of working from home, but all of this is coming from the point of view of either the employer or the employee. No point of view from the other people who share the same home.
My husband had a period of working from home many years ago when our children were small, we had 3 kids in elementary school and a dog. House was semi quiet from kid noise in the mornings, however as I was a stay at home mom at that point, this was my prime homework time – vacuuming, cleaning, cooking and such. My experience of working from home as the other person in the house was terrible. His office space was the kitchen, this meant stopping the dishwasher as it was too noisy during his meetings and forgetting to turn it on again, no vacuuming as he had phone calls, using the kitchen was impossible. I hated it! I was very happy when he switched jobs and worked back from the office full time.
And then the pandemic started and we all worked from home and had to navigate space, phone calls and everything else. Granted this time around our kids are adults, but with everyone returning home for a while we managed, in the begining with one dog and then with two.
This year the house started to empty again as workers returned to the office, however my husband still works from home.His company does not seem keen on returning back to the office for whatever corporate reason they have. How does that affect me, you ask? We work opposite hours, i have been relegated to the downstairs in the mornings. Our dog is not allowed to bark as it interrupts meetings , i am not allowed to sing in the shower and not because i am off key. Vacuuming is still not allowed during zoom calls, using the blender is not allowed, singing in the kitchen is not allowed and I’m not even talking about listening to music, at least in this aspect I am lucky as my hearing aids have bluetooth and it streams straight to my ears. But my home balance is off, i am a guest who is too afraid to interrupt during the day.
My point of view is if you do not let your employees back in the office then you must endure barking dogs and human activity in the house. Be reasonable as an employer about what the expectation is for working from home if you refuse to give a work from the office alternative. Not all of us have big houses with dedicated office space, most of us have normal size houses and live in a suburban town with shared spaces, with neighborhood kids screaming outside, our own dogs barking and the other humans in the house living. I know some work from home is great, but have you ever stopped to ask how the others in the shared space feel about this? Sage (our dog) and i just want to bark at the amazon, ups, fedex drivers, i really don’t want to vacuum but i don’t want to be forced to have 5 minutes break between zoom class to clean a space and really i do want to sing out loud and not only in the shower!
I left the gym this morning with my usual gym attire – black Costco yoga pants and t-shirt that was on top of the pile of clean laundry. As i was leaving a young lady was entering, now young for me is anyone under 40, this young lady was perfectly dressed in matching yoga pants and sports bra, hair looked perfect and even her eyeliner was perfectly drawn.
I looked at her and wondered when did i change from being dresses to the T for the gym or for anywhere else to looking like something my dog dragged home 99% of my time. Could it be the fact that i’ve been married for more than 30 years, the fact that i’m not really a girly girl or maybe the problem is that i really don’t have the patience or that i really don’t care. The fact it that if i need more than 10 minutes to get ready it is too much for me.
After pondering my gym outfit existence my brain continued on the crazy path, why bother looking so good for the gym? If i would have been single and looking i would have gone and dressed like this in the afternoon as the morning crowd at the gym is a different demographic than i would thing a young lady would be looking for, but then again what do i know.
From there i continued on this very weird thinking path and realised that maybe that’s her motivation in the morning to get up and go to the gym and it probably works for her. For me, it’s a different story, i really dislike the gym and i really love the disheveled mom look, a look that i really perfected over the years and as the Collin Raye country song goes – That’s my story and i’m sticking to it!
Recently there has been a Tik Tok going around with a voice over that says – being on vacation is better than being at work. And despite most of us agreeing with this as a matter of principal, some of us, me included, have a hard time disconnecting and enjoying our vacation. This summer i went on a cruise and as a true workaholic i did pay extra for WIFI access. As life tends to throw us curveballs – the internet was great for the phone, not so much for my laptop! I have to admit that letting go was not easy for me but i made a conscious decision to let go and go to the business center and work. I decided to be present, to let go and enjoy spending time with my family, visited new places and i even read a book or two and enjoyed my coffee in relative peace. This was not easy for me but it did force me to stop and take a look at how i am living and remind me that we all need to disconnect. I still check my emails during my days off, but i try to limit myself to checking only 3 times a day and not constantly. #business#work#coffee#vacationsareneeded#workholics#familytime
The last couple of years there were many movies about people with superpowers, great fantasy escape movies and I’m sure we all at one point wanted a superpower, it seemed like fun. But what is our superpower in everyday life, a friend asked me that this week and I had to stop and think as we were talking about our professional life but truthfully we need a power that encompasses all our life, Listening is a skill, it is not the same as hearing. Listening means you are an active participant in a conversation and yet many mistakenly think that if we hear, we are listening as well. I thought so as well and then one night I lost my hearing, I woke up with just ringing in my ears and nothing else. What no one told me was that hearing aids are not glasses, although I have a very good pair with the latest technology, I don’t hear like before, crowded places are a nightmare, masks are terrible for those of us who are hearing impaired. But, this forced me to pay attention, it takes a lot of effort to read body language and actually listen to what someone tells you and I gained a superpower! I can’t fly, i can’t change time but i am present and i am a much better listener than before my hearing loss, My superpower is being present in a conversation, the super power of observation and the ability to actually listen.
Some people take the shortest way possible, it has many advantages. However with life and things unexpected we might sometimes have to take the long way. I personally prefer to call it the scenic route, I started my MBA journey many years ago, had to stop for a while to prioritize, went back to school during the pandemic and finally completed my last class this past December, 25 years after I started. I learned a lot during my in between years, but mostly that it’s never too late to go back to school and it’s never too late to go to school. It might have been a long route, but personally after finishing my last class – it was the scenic one! #mba
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