Taking vacation to recharge

I have been closing myself off from the world a bit lately. This is because my energy levels are very low and I need some time to recover properly. This is a little more severe than the normal recovery times and it's because of work related stress.

As you probably have read in my article about stress related illness I am no stranger to this type of situations. This means I am pretty good at seeing the symptoms and can react to them in good time. This prevent any major events normally, but this year I failed to act in time and now I have to pay the price. A price that means taking time off and focus on breathing for a while.

 The assignment I was in in the beginning of this year took a big toll on my well being. There was a lot of things happening at the company and communication suffered because of it. This caused a lot of confusion and uncertainty and it caused damage not just to me, but others as well. It became so bad that I was actually going to ask to be released the same day my assignment was cancelled. Despite that my assignment was over I felt that my last few weeks was chaotic to the point where I had to call in my boss to help me survive.

This was not something that was done out of malice or out of incompetence, it just came as a product of the changes happening internally. People just started running so fast that communication suffered from it. I blame no one at the company for what happened, just myself for allowing another 6 month to be added to my contract at Christmas as I could clearly see the issues piling up at that time.

The last assignment I had just recently also came with a great deal of stress. Again it boil down to communication and a project plan that looked good on paper, but caused stress on me due to its setup. Fortunately I had two amazing team members that did everything they could to ease the stress, but as I was still fragile from the previous assignment this was pretty bad for me.

Both of these assignments are great assignments and I do not regret doing them in the slightest. I just feel stupid that I did not realize the toll it took on my health so I could handle it properly. This is why I am now taking two weeks off from everything to just replenish my energy levels. I am also looking into ways to track my situation more closely because I see a trend forming that I loose a bit to much energy lately.

I am not in any danger of getting burned out at the moment, but that is because I react to the situation before it becomes a real problem. This includes cancelling a great trip to Croatia with the company and taking time out from other activities to focus on "boring" things to let my mind catch up.

I will most likely write more here as writing relaxes my mind as I let the thoughts come out and manifest instead of running in my mind. It's a good way for me to make order out of chaos, so bare with me.