Not Quite My Traditional Christmas (or Relaxing And Enjoying My Time Off)

I rarely get a long break from work, but I was so lucky that I had almost 4 days off for Christmas. I only had to work in the afternoon for 2 hours on Friday, but I had all of Saturday, Sunday, and Monday off. And going into the holiday weekend, I didn’t have many plans figured out. I knew I had work on Friday and I’d be going to a workout on Monday, but that’s all I really planned in advance. I didn’t want to make too many plans since I wanted to see how I felt about things, and I knew that if I wanted to do something at the last minute, I probably could figure something out.

It was nice to be able to sleep in later for those 4 days. I still don’t sleep in that late, but even getting the extra hour of sleep made a difference in how I felt. And I know more than ever that I need to work on my sleep schedule because I want to feel like this more often. And since I didn’t have to work until the afternoon on Friday, I enjoyed a nice lazy morning before logging in for work. Being able to do my routine things at a more leisurely pace was a nice change. And even though work was a bit stressful as the last shift before Christmas, it wasn’t too bad. And I think being more relaxed and rested helped me get through some of the craziness.

My normal plan for Christmas is to watch movies (either at home or going out to a movie theater) and ordering in Chinese food. But I had been invited to my friend Erin’s casual Christmas gathering, so I decided to order food on Saturday instead. Ordering on Christmas is usually really busy and crazy, so ordering a day early made it a lot easier to get food. And I still had leftovers so I had some to eat on Christmas Day as well.

On Christmas Day, I went over for a late lunch at Erin’s place. It was a very low-key and relaxed gathering and there weren’t too many people there. It also didn’t feel like a Christmas thing, so it wasn’t as awkward that I don’t celebrate Christmas. It was more like just a regular party where everyone was just enjoying being together and being social. And she made some really great food like lasagna and cheesecake, which was an awesome lunch!

After lunch was done, I went back home and watched some movies on Netflix, so I did still have a little bit of my normal Christmas. But it was a nice change to be around others instead of spending the day alone like I normally do.

And on Monday, I had to work on getting back to a bit of my normal routine so Tuesday wouldn’t be too much of a shock for me after several days of no schedule and nothing needing to be done. I did a lot of things that I usually do on Sundays like getting my house clean and figuring out what I need to plan for during the week. I still had a lot of free time to relax and I spent that time reading since I had downloaded a bunch of books from Kindle Unlimited over the weekend. I think Monday felt the most like a normal weekend day for me, which was probably a good thing.

I do have another odd week coming. The rest of my work week this week is normal since Friday isn’t a holiday and Saturday is a half day at the other job, but Saturdays are already half days so that’s what I’m used to. But I’ll get another Monday off in a week so I’ll have another opportunity to relax before I really have to get back to my normal routine and being busy at work.

But before I get to that craziness, I’m glad I had these past few days to get ready and I’m so happy that I got to mix a bit of my old Christmas tradition with a new plan to have a really amazing holiday weekend.

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