Grateful Dad #14.23: Surviving Chaos
If there’s one word to sum up my work life in the last two months or so, it’s “hectic.” Several urgent projects came piling up one after the other; some we had barely two weeks to prepare. That meant long days and nights for all of us on the team.
Grateful Dad #14.23: Surviving Chaos
While I do like the new challenges and learning opportunities that come with each task, I still couldn’t help but wish that things were not too chaotic or at least there would be some sense of balance.
I was thinking about the possible root cause of why most work environments are chaotic; the only one that I can think of is that local office culture dictates that downtime at work equates to being idle. If you are not busy or are not doing anything, then your role is unimportant.
And so, we constantly seek ways to be occupied in the office; we look for projects, and we volunteer to do additional tasks, just to name a few. With that, sacrifices and compromises eventually happen and those often lead to burnout. I’m nowhere near being burned out, just to be clear, because I’m still enjoying my work. However, I did feel drained from being neck-deep in work. That’s not to mention that I still need to learn a lot in my job.
When things get a little too chaotic for me, I tell myself to do things one at a time or a day at a time. It’s a great way to survive the office mayhem. Aside from that, I try to remember the small things that I’m grateful for, and these are the following:
Our regular weekend trips to the mall and a local supermarket called Massway Hypermarket where they sell great quality toys at a bargain. This has been our weekly habit especially since Rafa was always asking for us to buy him toy robots.
Celebrating my sister-in-law’s birthday with a trip to a hot spring resort in Laguna. It was a good chance to have a break from city life and bring the kids to a new place.
Trying out a new restaurant at SM City Fairview called Caprice. They have good food and good service and we had a great time during our visit here.
A trip to Makati to celebrate the birthday of Mommy Khris’ best friend. We also met up with some of their friends and my favorite bunch from their big group.
Celebrating the birthday of Miguel & Rafa’s cousin in McDonald’s. Children’s parties are always fun especially if there are mascots in the program.
The occasional paid brand collaboration. While I’ve accepted the fact that I’d never be able to get good-paying collabs as before (and subsequently decided that I should focus my energy elsewhere), an unexpected brand collab came up so I’m grateful for that.
Finally, the good news that our work-from-home days will increase to three times a week instead of just twice.
Work has not tempered down but at least these breaks provided relief from the craziness at work. How about you, how do you handle it when work becomes chaotic for you?