The transition has begun

What transition is that, pray tell? The transition from ship to home....mentally. Allow me to explain.

In a typical vacation, you leave work on a Friday and return a week Monday later, 9 days in total. Generally, it takes 3 days for you to stop thinking about work (decompress), you have 3 great vacation days, and then you start thinking about returning to work (and how far behind you'll be). This is a psychological pattern applying to most people, give or take a day or two, one way or the other. Type A's might experience it worse than type B's. A 2018 study, commissioned by Apple Vacations, polled 2,000 workers and sought to identify how employees “switch off” from work when taking time off. They found that it takes about four days on average for Americans to completely relax and unload the stress and worries from work while on vacation.

In my case, it took about 2 weeks. On Jan 16th, 11 days on board, I wrote a blog entitled "needles in the groove", meaning I was transitioned from normal life to ship life. It's understandable that it took a bit longer as it was a bigger undertaking than a normal vacation.

But I've been wondering since the halfway point when I would start to compress again, meaning when my mind would naturally start the mental to do list of things I need to do when I get home. That time arrived yesterday. I think my 1 day of self quarantine with a cold hastened it a bit but it's about time, regardless. I rented a car to get us home. That's a good start. But there's a lot to do once we get there.

• Go thru 4 months of mail

• Turn back on water, insurance, cable etc

• Cut lawn, trim, mulch (basically the spring cleanup)

• Unpack, wash, clean house (I bet we can measure the dust with a ruler)

• Buy a new car for my wife (we gave her old car to our wonderful daughter and SIL at xmas)

• Etc etc etc

The list grows daily. I'm guessing it will take about 2 weeks to reacclimate to typical life again. I'm also supposed to run 2 half marathons. I think that will need to wait till the fall.

What's going to be different? I'm not going to sweat the small stuff and I'm going to hire more help than in the past to get everything done. I'm a do-it-myself guy and spent quite a bit of time about 10 years ago studying electrical, hvac, plumbing so I wouldn't be reliant on so many trades. But now I'm one person with a lengthy list and a realization that it's far better to get the majority done so we can enjoy them.

We're looking forward to Montenegro tomorrow. We've been before and it's one of our favorite places. Absolutely picturesque and fantastic. Pics tomorrow.

Hasta manana.