Vacation Recovery

Coming home from a vacation feels a lot like slipping down the side of a great mountain. We just got back from another trip to California for a wedding and while the trip was wonderful and the wedding was amazing, it is hard to come back to reality. Period.

So today I am sharing a few tips I have used the past two days to help me start feeling like a person instead of a chicken without a head: 

1)      Do a brain dump. My husband left for a business trip 8 hours after we returned home. All but one of those was spent sleeping. The list of “should get done” and “need to buy” and “holy cow I have a full inbox” was mind-numbingly long. All throughout the first day I kept a piece of paper on the desk and would quickly add things to stop them from swimming through my head. 

2)      Give each item a place. After the kids went to bed I input all those items into my lists – grocery list, people to call, things I need to talk to my husband about – and actually assigned them a place. Brain dumps are fabulous. But often the next step of making decisions about those tasks is skipped, which leads to those same lists floating through your brain, which then makes the brain dump kind of pointless.
3)      Everything has a different weight. Not everything is going to be of equal importance. When we have neglected things for a while, due to vacation, illness or life events, it can often feel like everything needs to be done in the same moment because it is all of equal importance. It can be hard to jump back into reality and remember how to sort through what truly needs your attention and what can wait another day. Or 10.

After I got it all out and assigned a place in the next few days or month (seriously, some things can wait), it feels like I can do this. I still have so many things needing my attention, but taking it one day at a time helps me focus on what truly matters and still remember to breathe.