Breathe

Lots of things happened over the last two weeks and I'm transitioning into a new work role.  It's exciting, I have reached the point where I had for the last decade told myself that if I make it there I would have 'made it', but honestly never expected to be there at my age.  So, perhaps I should be flattered that my bosses entrust my to all this.  Or maybe I need to give myself more credit.  This new role, however, also brings with it increased responsibility.  Once again my lunches have gone by the wayside (does anyone seriously get an hour for lunch in this city still???) and 10-hour work days are the norm.  I do still need to keep working at more of a work-life balance.  Someone had sent me this quote, which does put things into perspective quite nicely:

We each have two cookie jars inside of us. One is for ourselves and the other is for all the people around us. We have learned to fill the cookie jar for the others and we bake a lot of cookies for this cookie jar. We have been trained not to bake cookies for our own cookie jar and we have also been trained to not even think about doing this for ourselves. Somehow, if we keep on baking cookies for others, our cookie jar will have cookies in it. Supposedly, others will be baking for us and everyone will be happy. But in reality it does not seem to work this way. Our cookie jar is usually empty and if someone does put cookies in it, they are never exactly the kind that we want at that time. No wonder that we start to feel deprived and resentful and angry as we watch others eating the cookies that we have baked. The paradox is so simple: fill your own cookie jar first with exactly what you want and let the overflow go to the other cookie jars. Keep your cookie jar full. Teach your family members to fill their own cookie jars first. (Susanna McMahon)

And in the spirit of this, I decided by Thursday afternoon that I should take a few hours off on Friday afternoon and do something for myself.  I decided to go camping for a night!