A couple of things I noticed yesterday:

1. Here we are, another week before a long break, and I have crammed this week chock-full with meetings and things to do. Not bad things, not things I’m dreading, but just full. And this is absolutely a pattern with me. Every time I have a vacation or break coming up, the week before is really busy. So what’s happening? First, there’s some subconscious guilt about not working the following week, and a need to prove my worth this week so I deserve the vacation. Second, it’s a scheduling error on my part. Because nothing can go to the next week, everything goes here. I know that this happens gradually–some things get put there a month in advance, some a week before–but what I realize might be missing is some sort of control on this, an accounting that this amount of meetings is too much. And I don’t know, off the top of my head, what that amount is.
2. At the end of the work day yesterday, around 9:15PM, I sat down on the couch and felt something I hadn’t felt in a long while. Like sort of a dazed bliss perhaps? A recognition that it had been a long day, but a good day of work, and now there was nothing left. A sense of completion. And while I work to be complete at the end of every work day, there was something like a high of being that tired and complete. This morning it had me rethinking work. I do enjoy that feeling, and while I don’t want it every night (I slept like a rock, that was great, but I’m still tired this morning from the exhaustion), I want to be involved in things that give me that feeling. I think it also helped that I had 3(!) in-person meetings yesterday, which is like more than I’ve had in the past 3 months combined.