Topping up my joy bank

Work life balance…it’s not always about the length of time you spend on each, sometimes (oftentimes for me) the line between is blurred. I love my job, I love working with children and families, I love our team and my peers in our sector and beyond. I love finding creative solutions to challenges, testing, refining, learning and sharing.

I also love my family, my dogs, spending time at the gym, mooching around vintage and charity shops and getting out and about with Mr McG. 

This week has been a challenging one at work with funding issues to be resolved, a semi final pitch for a business comp to prepare, structure and capacity of the leadership team to be thought about, business plan updates, recruitment to the management team, operational issues, workforce capacity challenges and more…alongside covering the service manager role in one of our services. 😱

I’ve already done 6 days on site in Dundee and my Sunday is going to be a long one in my home office, catching up on admin, practising that pitch, and reviewing quality assurance. 

But I’m not looking for sympathy, I’m lucky I have a job I love in a sector that brings me great joy and job satisfaction. I delight in seeing the happy faces of children in our services, I am loving getting to know the individual children and families, and I’m excited by the opportunities I see for delivering greater social impact in our communities. 

I’m starting my day with a brew and some grateful reflection. Thinking about how busy things are but how lucky I am to be able to work flexibly. I have the tools I need to let me work from anywhere and I can manage to squeeze in precious interludes in my working week, wee gaps in my diary where I can do something that tops up my joy bank. So this week as well as loads and loads of work I have managed to find time for a few fun hours with my daughter and baby grandson, a session at the gym, some time to read for pleasure, a night out at the theatre and dinner/drinks with my hubby. While driving to Dundee each day I’ve been lucky to see fields full of gorgeous lambs and calves, and have listened to lots of good radio while on the road too.

So today, as well as working, I’ll be out walking the doggos and using the time to think about the week ahead, thinking about how to resolve some of the challenges we face, thinking about meetings that are scheduled, and thinking about the children and families our work supports and what more we can do to ensure their experience with us is the best it can possibly be. 

Time wise the non work bits have been tiny but joy wise they have been immense. How do you top up your joy bank?