Love is all around us

Donation day

Tuesday, April 18th was the day I was looking forward to: donating money to an organization my husband volunteered at. He volunteered for this high school robotics group for a couple of years and it brought him a lot of joy. I proposed an alternate universe where he had a crowd like them and he’d have a better childhood. I dropped by the school on a good day because the robotics team was in Houston for Worlds. They had no idea about the donation. I suspect they’ll learn about the donation when they come back home later this week.

Naptime is an indulgence

My husband came back home on Tuesday. He is COVID and pneumonia-free since he spent most of his annual training in quarantine. Today he and Lana are going out to a car meet with a few friends. I was supposed to join them but our pets had a vet appointment today. On the bright side, it is kind of refreshing to be by myself and not have to entertain my kid every second of every day — it is a much-needed respite. The only thing I have on the schedule today is taking my dogs to the vet and nothing else after that. As I mentioned before, it was getting really hard when my husband was away for training so long. Don’t get me wrong! I love my kid but it can be overstimulating. My free day after the vet appointment would be a trip to the gym, go grocery shopping, taking a nap, and binge-watching The Mindy Project instead of the Baby Shark channel. How indulgent!

Home Garden Project Reset

The first week of a new job is complete! For many weeks up to now, I was so nervous. I kept wondering if I made the right decision. Was this lateral move step back for me? Should I have stayed in my old job until the right opportunity came around? I kept thinking that a promotion would happen if I stayed long enough and kept seeking the internal job board.

After completing my first week, I think I have made the right decision to move on. I appreciate that my new supervisor is transparent and detailed with the growth that could come out from my position as it is a newly created position. And that growth also comes with a promotion too (don’t forget pay bump) which made me very happy.

Do not get stuck on a to-do list

Grab a horchata latte and relax with me. I’ve been on a horchata latte kick lately because it’s so good. Horchata latte is espresso and the Mexican rice drink, horchata. Usually I am not a horchata fan because a lot of the time I find it diluted. Maybe it’s better to attempt horchata myself — this horchata recipe looks so good!

Speaking of kick, I’ve been reading a few good graphic novels which has gotten me back on my reading groove.

Horchata latte

Career break week

This week was my week off before I start my new job. Though I had a list of things I’d like to do during my career break week, I did not accomplish any of them but it was still a very productive week. I’ve learned early in my life to not get stuck on a to-do list. On Monday, I visited the three daycares I narrowed down after a 2-3 weeks of research. On Tuesday, I made a decision on which daycare to enroll Lna and paid the deposit. Thursday was her first day there. We did half-days on Thursday and Friday. When I picked her up at noon, it was so weird to think that I’m only four miles away from my house, not 25 miles. I had the rest of the day to continue running errands or driving home for nap time.

I spent my week putting together a dressier wardrobe for work. It’s business casual, how it has been with my other previous jobs. I got away with slacks and sneakers since I did a lot of walking around the hospital. But this employer prefers “a suit jacket over a dress or dress shirt/slacks.” I decided to go in a greener direction by looking into neighborhood no-buys on Facebook and thrift stores. I also had some clothes that needed some fixing so I sent it over to an alteration place.

My mom gifted me tomato plants last weekend. I had to get supplies for the tomato plant such as a large terracotta plant, plate, soil, and the tomato cage. It was very hard to find a large terracotta plant. I went to a few stores and finally found one.

Also, I got a chance to meet with my cousin and her husband for dinner. It’s hard to meet up with them since they both work weekends. She’s a flight attendant and he’s nurse. I guess looking back, though I did not accomplish anything on my list, it was overall a good week off. I even worked on a few posts that have been in the draft backburner for so long.

The Next 30 days

…will be interesting. It’s too long to share, but… I would not be surprised if at some point one of the BILs will call their mom over. MIL will come to our house and ask my husband, “why are you pushing your brothers to get jobs and be more productive? Why are you scaring them with an eviction?”

Tags: #WeekendCoffeeShare

The Long break

We’re not having coffee this week. We’ll be having Argentinian parilla. There is more meat on this grill than what I eat in a month. I usually get my protein in the form of beans and eggs. When I had to amp up my protein when I was pregnant, I used protein powder.

Between my husband and I, it was leftovers for lunch and dinner for days.

On to the next thing

** Warning: Long post **

I put in my two-week notice and decided to go with Employer #1.

Where did I leave off? Well, I withheld the news last that Employer #1 gave me an offer last Thursday. I received the offer letter 20 minutes before my scheduled interview with Employer C (Current Employer) for the assistant hospital administrator position. At the time I was very confident with the outcome with Employer C. I had support from my supervisor and the person who held the previous position who were confident I would do well if I got the job. It would have been a leapfrog of a promotion, I would have gone from a position that is a step below a director to someone who is a step above a director. If you called me back to Earth, you’d shake me and say “It’s a major reach! You’re disturbing the pecking order — that’s not how it works!”

Door number 1, 2, and 3

** Warning: Long Post **

I just see a person

On Saturday my husband is off to a robotics competition. He’s a coach/mentor for a local high school. BIL #1 and BIL #2 are going to see their mom since it is her birthday. They offered to bring Lana because it would be nice for her to see her grandmother and it would free me up, but I told them she had dance classes and we had other plans. Honestly, I am less enthused about Lana going to MIL’s birthday because I am still bitter about that one spontaneous visit where she compared her with her cousins. But that was only part of it.

A Weird weather weekend

Hello everybody and happy weekend! I got a nice surprise in the mail. Thank you Ju-Lyn the lovely postcard. It’s so bright and summery. I love the spread — I’d like coffee with all that please!

DIY vs. Delegate

This is the weekend I finally catch up on sleep. My husband came back from training — which was a relief. But of course he’s catching up on sleep this weekend because he’s going back to work to his regular job on Monday. I’ll admit the last two weeks were difficult — especially when Lana was sick and then I was sick. When my husband is away, I like to use that time to work on a bunch of projects — it could be an art project to display in the dining room, plant something in the front yard, etc. But lately I’ve been too tired to do basic things.

Working on my daily three

Happy weekend coffee share! So I wanted to do a recap of how my three tasks a day experiment has been going so far. The practice is pretty simple: I write no more than three tasks per day on my work planner for work-related tasks and I do the same on my day planner for my non-work related items. If you see my work planner before, you would find a ridiculously long tasks lists containing mix of high- and low-priority items. On my day planner, my task lists were starting to look more like wish lists of things I wanted to do.

Here is what I learned so far:

It’s not about doing less and being lazy, it’s about setting boundaries — especially at work.

Listing three high priority work items sets intention for my work day. But there are days when something happens that calls my attention (per my supervisor) and all of the sudden there’s about an hour left in the work day. From there, I want to take a brief moment to breathe…. and then a volunteer stands by my door asking if I’m busy. I take another breath and I look at my list shocked by how I did not make any effort to do anything on my daily three. I look at the volunteer profusely apologizing for not being able to help her right now but she could send me an e-mail. Thankfully, she was very understanding because there have been some who would NOT take that as an acceptable answer.

It’s ok to have recurring tasks even if they’ve been there daily for the last several weeks because they’re clearly very important

Everyday for the past several weeks on my work planner I listed “write letter of recommendation.” This will continue up until the beginning of November because I have MANY volunteers who are applying to medical school, P.A. school, nursing school, graduate school, undergraduate, etc. It’s in my daily three because I would HATE to miss a deadline for something so important to them.

Other recurring tasks were around events and projects I managed. For example, this past Thursday, I had this large event. A month leading up to this event, I wrote on my work planner the name of that event everyday up to the day of. I wanted to make sure I still had it on my mind to finalize the details, confirm RVSPs, etc. I knew this event would have gotten lost in the shuffle of other things and suddenly re-emerge itself the week of if I did not write it down on my daily three everyday this month.

For home, I write exercise on my daily three everyday because I know I forget to exercise on most days. It’s clearly important to me since I spend a lot of my time sitting on a desk. Other recurring tasks I’ve had at some point was watering my newly installed plants daily for the first several weeks until established.

Spreads my to-dos throughout the week.

Maybe this is more beneficial for my home life. Why do I let myself believe I can do a million tasks in a day when I can just spread it throughout the week in groups of three? The daily three makes each day more digestible.

It looks like my daily three for work and for home will be here to stay!

Photo by MART PRODUCTION on Pexels.com

How do you manage your tasks at work and at home? Comment below!

Maximize Your Work-Life Balance as a Health Care Professional

Happy Motivation Monday, everyone!

I came across a post on Med à la Mode about work-life balance as a healthcare professional. I work in retirement living. It is an interesting hybrid of healthcare,  recreation, and real estate. In retirement living, there are nurses and other non-medical line staff on the floor taking care of the older adults. First of all, I have to say the line staff work with a heart of service and compassion. It is amazing how they put up with all the workload they do in their day-to-day. Whenever it comes to a project where I do work with the line staff, I already know this is one more thing too many. I make sure I develop a good relationship with them — that always goes first before the start of any project. I also want to show that we can be diplomatic and we could work together. I don’t want them to shove whatever down their throat, push them to the ground until they’re burnt out and unsatisfied. I hear from other colleagues who say, “I am receiving push-back from so-and-so which is why this project is not done.”

Maybe the reason why I am empathetic towards the line staff is that I too have many of those same moments they’re feeling. I have a lot in my day-to-day, I get pulled from 17 different directions, and I am expected to perform miracles.

I like to think of myself as a champion of work-life balance because each day I do these checks where ask myself things such as, “Do I need to stay in the office another hour later?” or “Do I really need to reply this e-mail now?” Before I almost never did these self-checks. I always said “yes” to whatever task and followed through in what is considered “record time”. I was praised for being “on top of it” for years. It’s great to get praise, but after a while, this machine-like work ethic slowly started becoming unsustainable without any car. I was tired and feeling foggy all the time. I felt bad for my dogs because they need me to come home and feed them. That is more than enough reason for me to step away from the computer.

Anyways, enough ranting. I came across Stacey’s post on her blog. It was timely for me because back in December, I pledge to take care of myself and put relationships and meaningful things in my life first rather than bury myself in my computer, smartphone, and cubicle.

I urge everyone around me: family, friends, and colleagues to evaluate each day — it does not matter how many times per day — “am I achieving work-life balance?” If you say “no”, then please step back.

From Med à la Mode blog:

So, you’ve taken the first step and have decided that you want to become a healer, first, that is a remarkable choice to make; to devote your life and to care for others, be it at the level of a pre-med, medical, physician assistant student or physician. With this decision in mind, it’s crucial to make sure you take care of yourself, too. Failing to do so can result into burnout, an alarming trend that is plaguing the health care industry.

Burnout is defined as a “pervasive healthcare problem characterized by a loss of emotional, mental, and physical energy due to continued job-related stress.” With burnout, it can cause you to disengage and see your work as something negative and meaningless, when it once was a positive accomplishment in your life.
What is work-life balance? Work-life balance is the relationship between your work and your personal life, and how these priorities affect and overlap one another.

Here are some simple steps that I’ve come up that I use that can help you do just that: 

(Click here for the original post)

Monday Motivation: I’m back

…actually, I came back from Iceland on Friday night.

It was such a fantastic trip. Stayed tuned for Travel Tuesdays and the future one’s thereafter.

Also on Friday night, when I arrived to LAX, I turned on my phone to find out I’VE BEEN ACCEPTED TO THE MPA PROGRAM!! I start school on January 21st.

Today is my first back at work. It feels different. It feels busy(ier). Maybe because I got accepted to grad school, I anticipate more tasks next coming weeks. I need to print and complete to send out my submit my intent to register at school. Plus catch up with the pace of work.

Actually, hold up. No need to go from 0 to 100 MPH as soon as I get to my cubicle. Instead of seating myself at my desk to review my e-mails, I’ll distribute gifts to my co-workers, write my “thank you” cards to the people who wrote me their letters of recommendations, then I’ll get around to the world’s to-do list (aka e-mail) for me.

I always hear one saying, “I need a vacation from a vacation”. I think instead of self-flagellating coming to the office 2 hours before your usual time and staying 2 hours after, to play catch-up with your tasks, just ease into your first work day back. Besides you have meaningful activities framing around your work whether it is going to the gym, walking your dog, spending time with family, cooking dinner — it makes no sense to stay 2 hours after to NOT go to the gym, NOT walk your dog, NOT have dinner with your family.

How do you adjust coming back to work after a vacation? Comment below?