Holiday: Day -1
Someone much smarter than me once told me that the best thing you can do when you come back from a holiday is to book another holiday so that you always have something to look forward to.. I did not take this advice, however, in early February I realised my annual leave accrual was building up, borders were starting to open and travel became possible overseas, so I put the two of these together and decided to book an overseas trip, and so I sit here today writing this block having been excited ever since I booked, and the day has finally arrived (thanks for whoever gave me that advice).
One of the things I enjoy most about holidays is the planning, that level of optimism about exploring new things, squeezing the most out of each day, and so for the past 4 months I’ve spent a fair bit of time looking at how we can maximise our time. The good thing is we are heading to Europe, so there’s plenty to do, I also feel there’s a level of unfinished business given we were in Europe when COVID first started and we didn’t get to see everything we wanted.
Anyhow, today I woke with lots of ambition, I’d struggled to sleep the night before and so had made a list, waking at 4:30am to take Sebastian to swimming meant the day kicked off early, it also gave me time in the morning to finish off the last of my work before going on leave. By 8am work was largely done, swimming was done, I’d had my Starbucks for the day, and added more items to my list. It was time to go shopping.
Best way to relax before a holiday… golf
Something I’ve been slightly more anxious about than normal has been losing luggage given some of the stories doing rounds of the internet, to counter this I was off to purchase some airbags, there’s mixed reviews of their effectiveness but for peace of mind I went and picked some up, one for each of the bags we will be checking in… tick.
Next was generic admin, now I’m not really a fan of the admin side, passports and so on, but I got my act together and did everything that was needed, travel insurance, advised the bank where I was going, vaccination certificates, licences, cards, currency, all done… tick
Okay so here is where the day takes a bit of a turn, I decided to just have a bit of a nap, which is totally the responsible thing to do, just a couple of lazy hours, it wasn’t on the list of things to do but seemed appropriate, and I deserved it right given the time I woke up. I actually think the benefit of having a sleep was that I wasn’t tired or irritable which would have benefit during the back end of the process. To top it off I decided to go play some golf, not a full round, just some holes, things have been frustrating me a little so hopefully I could iron them out and that would be a major weight off my shoulders. To cut a long story short it worked, I also nailed my tee shot on the ninth hole which I’ve been struggling with (golfers read on: Par 3, playing about 160m, reached for the 7 iron, hole goes naturally left to right a little with tree overhang and a creek to the right, my natural shot shape is right to left which means aiming over the creek, anyhow, sweet tee shot, carried 156m, landed on the green and rolled out to within 10 feet of the hole, best shot I’ve ever done there).
And with that I came home and completed the most dreaded of all holiday tasks… packing.
On a positive note we packed last weekend, being a bit OCD about these things I wanted to check everything weighed in correctly, so really it was just about finalising the last few things to go in, making sure everything was charged etc.
And so now I can sit back, watch some golf and F1 on the Tv knowing everything is ready to go tomorrow, feeling relaxed, excited and optimistic about what lies ahead.
Michael