Thoughts Following the First Week of Busy Season

The first week of my staff 1 year busy season is in the books. I have a few thoughts that I wanted to record about the experience.

1. I didn't want to write an hour by hour summary of the weekend. The weekend is supposed to be about relaxing and not trying to keep track of what I was doing all day. We took the opportunity to sleep in in both Saturday and Sunday. I did make up for missing my run on Friday with a run on Saturday. I went 3 miles and felt great. I even almost finished watching The Walk while I was running. I am at the most exciting part of the movie, where Phillipe is on his high wire between the twin towers. I can hardly wait to finish it during my run on Monday. We also ran our errands for the week. We went grocery shopping, and picked up a few things Alison needs for work. Alison wanted to go clothes shopping so we went out to Traverse Mountain. She got some new clothes from Loft and some shoes from Vans. We also went to see The Revenant. When it got nominated for so many academy awards Alison became really excited to go see it. I warned her that I had heard it was violent. It proved to be a very intense movie. At one point Alison leaned over to tell me she didn't really like, but by the end it had won her over. It was a very interesting film. We also prepared most of our meals for the upcoming week. We prepared for our lesson in primary. This week our lesson was on Lehi's vision of the tree of life. We attended our Sunday meetings. Alison played the organ in sacrament meeting. We taught our primary class. We have the 9 year old class. They like to think they have a reputation for being trouble makers but Alison keeps them in line. Otherwise we spent the weekend relaxing. We are not ready for the weekend to be over.

2. Alison asked me how this busy season compared to my expectations. Was it better, worse, or about what I expected? I would have to say, so far, it has been about what I expected. I know some weeks will be more difficult and my schedule may become more demanding, but so far my schedule is very manageable. I have many friends and coworkers who have had a very different experience. I know people who end up working until midnight or later. I may have a few days like that, but overall my experience will be much more like this first week. So far it is looking like I will have a good busy season.

3. I find that it is easier to enjoy work during busy season now than it was during my internship. This is really important for me. It is important to find joy in the journey. Rather than looking at busy season as something to be endured I find things to look forward to each day. Those things make the unpleasant parts much more bearable. I wrote at the start of the week that I would try to enjoy busy season - by that measure week 1 was a success.