I cannot even begin to describe how exceptionally excellent it was to be away from everything for a month. Naturally, the very best part was spending time with Joan and Ovi – followed by seeing new and astonishingly beautiful things.

I’d not left Sydney for 2.5 years and not surprisingly I was in quite the rut and not in an ideal head-space.

Perspective – I was in desperate need of it.

♥

I’ve possibly written about this already (and am certain if I go back to find it, I’ll become lost and distracted and unlikely to return here!). In January this year, Vincenzo (my protege) left SML after 10 years for the proverbial greener pastures. This meant that the area that Vincenzo managed (let’s call it ice-skating) would be leaderless. Long ago, when Vincenzo was a baby grad, I managed the ice-skating area, but I had long since moved to head-up sky-diving.

There is a long and painful history of pretty terrible outcomes in ice-skating during the gap between me and Vincenzo. So both he and Bobs were using all their powers of persuasion to convince me to bring it under the sky-diving watch. I was terribly conflicted about this – but eventually said I would consider, but only if SML came to the party on a few things.

I was pretty firm that I wanted 2 days off per month while keeping my full-time salary – because I knew that this was fairly achievable budget-wise – and it would effectively bring forever underpaid me in line salary-wise with my two close peers.

And so I took on ice-skating. And there everything stalled for 7 months – with no word and seemingly no progress on the arrangement – despite follow-ups. There were some major organisational changes at this time, but hey I’m not getting any younger.

So I reached out to my favourite recruiter, feedback was really positive and very encouraging – and we agreed to kick off my job search in earnest when I returned from Europe.

♥

Four weeks away though! It put all that SML-madness into perspective.

I don’t want to build my career, I don’t want to go through the hustle, strive and grind of proving myself in a new workplace, I love my team, I have a very decent work-life balance, I’m paid well, I’m highly regarded, I have freedom.

I’m starting to feel my age – which is definitely a post for another time.

What I really want right now is to build my life away from work! I want new experiences! To travel! To learn new things! To create!

And I arrived back from holiday to discover my arrangement approved – and with a pay increase. Thanks Universe!

I’m having my second Friday off tomorrow – it will be absolutely GLORIOUS!