Taking A Day Off –The Magic of Perspective

It’s amazing how one day away from something can help restore your perspective.

After 30 straight days of work, I took yesterday off to celebrate Elliana’s 11th birthday.

Mired in the craziness that continues to be the housing and mortgage industry had me at my wits end by the time I came home on Monday night.

When I woke up on Tuesday, and started making the birthday breakfast, I felt my spirit and soul begin to remind me of why I was working so hard.

We took off for an early morning matinee of Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs II, and watching Elliana and Lisa snuggling up in a nearly empty theater brought a smile to my face.

Nothing I do during the day is worth it unless I can have moments like this.

The girls went out to get their nails done, and then I began making up our dinner–and decided to surprise them by putting up our fall decorations.

In the craziness of a month of 7 day weeks I haven’t been doing the normal seasonal stuff that signals our family’s entrance into the fall and holiday season.

I actually had forgotten it was even fall, and bringing out each decoration, transported me back to our little extended stay room back in New Jersey 11 years before.

We were so focused on the pending cycle, and the stress of all the anthrax chatter was stressing us out.

As we set the pumpkins and  a little 6 inch scarecrow up, and a little leaf garland, we pictured ourselves decorating our house someday, hopefully with a child that would result from this IVF.

It ended up being the frozen embryo transfer that made that vision come true, and I silently thanked God for the fact that I was setting up fall decorations to celebrate the 11th year that our frozen embryo had been in our lives.

I remembers how many sacrifices we made, and how impossible the odds were against us actually succeeding.

It helped give me perspective about the challenges I continue to face in my day to day work, and made me realize that if you never pull yourself out of the thick of something, no matter how much you want it, you can lose sight of why you are even doing in the first place.

If you find yourself in that place, do what I did.

Take a day off.

The magic of perspective might just be all you need to get out of that exhausted funk you’ve been in.