We seem to centre ourselves around our work, even if we try not to. Whether it be on the job site, crunching numbers in an infernal Excel spreadsheet, or chasing down new stories and photos at the drop of a hat all day, it can almost consume us.
You don’t seem to realise it at first; checking if someone’s responded on your work email account you’ve (stupidly) allowed to be on your phone, keeping an eye on social media for any mention of a breaking story, coming in 30 minutes early and staying an hour later in a last-ditch effort to finish everything off.
Hate to be cliché, but it’s a “straw that broke the camel’s back” thing, and it always comes back to bite you in the derrière.
You start sleeping later on the weekends, screwing up the sleep schedule for the coming week; then it’s answering phone calls later and later.
Maybe it’s tiredness, maybe it’s burnout, you’re not quite sure what.
But when the opportunity to take a break comes, you desperately seize it with both hands and you realise what’s been missing.
Quality time with friends, a sleep schedule that actually works sort-of well for you, and a break from the thing that makes up most of your life: work.
Things start to come back after you remove things, filling a void.
Hand-grinding my coffee beans for my morning brew (is my Melbourne leaking?), a cheeky bushwalk and not seeing a soul for hours, baking an enormous cake and sharing it with friends after dinner.
Then, the adventures come. This time, it’ll be catching up with uni friends, and a ski trip where I’ll hopefully not break my legs.
It doesn’t have to be that extravagant though — a mid-morning café visit on a day off or even reading a book on the back deck would do to quell the crushing rise of work, ever hungry and threatening to fill up your life.
We all discover something to break the monotony eventually, you just have to find it.