My wife and kids are on holiday in Spain, which in itself might already be special, but that just happened to work out this way (original plan was that they would join my wife's parents while I spent two weeks in the US working, but as the last week got cancelled, I ended up spending a week alone here in Norway).
Where I am putting things into practice is how I decide to spend that week and although the choices might seem small at first, I feel they are a deeper expression of the choice I made earlier to life life my way.
For example, I made the conscious decision to work as much as possible this week. The simple reason is that I have a huge backlog of stuff to do (who doesn't?) and I would rather sacrifice some me-time when I'm alone this week on clearing this backlog, then having to do it when my family is back. So here I am on Sunday answering emails, reviewing status of projects I'm working on and actively driving action on the most urgent/important ones. Because I want to.
However as I do want to enjoy the huge amount of me-time life has given me, I am mixing work with some leisure time. At first I was thinking, oh I need to go to the gym, I need to be healthy because everybody tells me I need to be. Well, I decided not to. I have a session planned in the gym tomorrow and I decided that that was enough for now. I'll probably go back there again later this week and since I set a goal of going to the gym twice per week, this is good enough for me. And the key thing here for me is "good enough". I am a perfectionist who wants too much and previously I would have let that feeling get to me and go and overdo it. Not anymore, the goal is set and I'm sticking to it.
So what is it that I do? I guess what a lot of people would subscribe as "wasting time online":
- I've got my Spotify music blasting louder than I ever can with the family around, running to it to "star" songs I really like, which to people who aren't as obsessed by music as I am might seem like an utterly waste of time
- I've been on and off Twitter and Facebook ever since I got back home. Which I don't consider wasting time, for me, being here all by myself in Norway that is maintaining my social life.
- I've been catching up on videos I wanted to see for a long time on Youtube and yes I did watch 5 minutes of the Eurosong finale. Hell, I even suffered 3 songs of Tokyo Hotel live, just to remember myself I really think they suck.
And then serendipity send "My Way" by Frank Sinatra to my Spotify songs, and since I've paid tribute to Frank and Sid before, here's Sid's version of it:
Enjoy it and go and live life your way
