The summer holidays are over

Over the summer, I had two separate one-week breaks: one at the start of August and the other at the end. Whilst off, we went to North Wales and Devon, and I loved every minute of switching my brain off. However, holidays always kill my routine. Late nights, late mornings, fewer gym visits and steps, eating way worse than I normally would. And it's not just during the two weeks of annual leave. The routines went out the window for the whole six weeks Ellie was off school. I used to love summer breaks as a kid, but as an adult, it is so easy for those bad habits to creep in.

Today is the first day back at work for me, and being the 1st of September is a great time to draw a line under those bad habits and lock back in. One of the biggest things I'm looking to tackle is my sleep schedule. Even before the summer holidays, I didn't have a fixed bedtime. Even my wake-up time would be different at the weekends. The constant changes can't have been good, which is why, moving forwards, I'm trialling waking up at 6:30am every day. That's going to be tough at the weekend, but I need to focus on what those extra hours in the morning will give me and how I can best use them.

Posts-wise, I haven't posted here since the start of June. I've thought about the site a lot in that time, just not had the desire to write anything. I was tackling a tricky and stressful work project during that time, and maybe that drove me to avoid using this site outside of work hours. Writing should always happen, regardless of personal circumstances, because it's so useful for my mental health. Moving forward, that separation is something I need to get better at remembering and sticking to.