My favourite time of day…sunset! Probably symptomatic of why I am not grossly fussed with slowly hitting my sunset years. There is something very calming about sunset. The day is just winding down, with a bit of luck, all that needed doing are done and if not, well…too bad! It’s time to just enjoy and see what happens next. 

I’m in that phase of my life where I am like, “I have done most of what I feel I needed to do…everything else is well deserved extras”…like this refreshing margarita at the end of hectic day! I would be very happy if I get to experience seeing my kids get married, spend time with grandkids, grow old with hubby. But if I don’t get to do all that, my life would still have been worth the while. I brought three gorgeous kids to this world who would no doubt leave their marks (if not their massive carbon footprint!!) and continue what legacy I may have left them. 

Now it’s time to sit back, hang out, enjoy what I can. I’d hate to spend the rest of my time hurrying about from place to place and trying to make a living and missing out on a life. I never was the type. I have had my share of workload…constantly on overdrive in my younger years. I can’t say I miss those times. They were hard. Juggling 3 kids, 2 jobs and a husband in a country where I didn’t quite master the language. But as with anything I encountered in life, I ploughed through coz I knew it would be worth it. I would not call myself a workaholic as although I worked a lot, it was also too finance the times I played hard. I was able to provide my family fun short breaks to balance out the times when I was out and about trying to bring home a small part of the bacon. My husband luckily took charge of the more solid and serious stuff.

I may not have done this everyday but on most days, I looked back on the whole day, reflected and tried to appreciate the positives. On the more challenging days, I tried to be grateful that the day was about to end and washed whatever frustration down with a glass of bubbly. Thankfully, I still have a functioning liver so my bad days couldn’t have been plenty.

 I generally don’t use filters on my photos and I can honestly say that the water is this exact same colour live.  

How beautiful is this place??? Club Paradise in Coron lived up to its name. I’m out of superlatives here. This is a throw back shot from a couple of years back on my first trip to Palawan. We only had 4 days on the island but it was so peaceful that we could really tank-up on energy. I didn’t know what to expect as I had not originally booked for this island. It was an 8 day trip to the Philippines and we wanted to get a bit of beach feeling before attending a family wedding. Then some booking mishap led us to having to re-book and we ended up here. We were indeed lucky.

 There wasn’t much to do here. WiFi was close to non-existent and as the initial panic of being offline dissipated, I was finally able to let go and enjoy digital detox. The island was tiny enough to explore in no time and so I was left with no choice but to hang about the beach and read my book. The full-board offer meant we didn’t have to worry about where our next meal would come from 😉

It’s these regular downtimes between long periods of hard work that kept me sane in the least years. At one stage, I was able to take a short break ranging from 2 days to 2 weeks every 6 weeks. It just meant that in the time when I can feel the effects of my downtime wearing-off, I have the advantage of staying motivated at work by looking forward to my next break. I was never one for long 6-week-breaks. Having 30 days holidays a year on average (not counting overtime and public holidays), I was able to budget my holidays wisely. Downtime doesn’t have to be somewhere exotic….it could also be somewhere close. One just be aware that one takes the time to recover and regroup.

Quite often, I didn’t actually fully go offline. I simply changed my working environment. Working remotely from a small island like Boracay in November when everyone else freezing their assets away in Europe already helped reduce stress. I had my normal work pensum but my surroundings ensured that my stress levels were down to zero. Nobody ever got excited when I told them of the work I did but everyone tuned in when I told them from where I worked. In the end, you can’t impress people by telling them how much work you have or how “stressed” you are. Nobody cares! So look after yourself…for yourself!