🎉 Feel good Friday: from work to holidays and back 🌟

[Walter Buggenhout]

Today is the last working day in August. For people with kids in my home country - 🇧🇪 Belgium - that aligns with the last day of the summer holidays.

It has always been a day that calls for mixed emotions:

• 🥲 a touch of sadness since the holidays are really coming to an end now;
• 🤪 a comparable amount of crazy excitement to be reunited with friends ...

For me personally, not that much has changed between the - now long gone - experience at school or my current life at work. I have probably been blessed to always find a job and belong to a team that had a similar vibe, good connections and fun stuff to do as when I was a school kid. Maybe I still unconsciously think and behave as if I was still 18 or 20 years old - who knows ... 😊 

Wondering though how easy or hard it is for your guys to switch from work to holidays and back in the best possible vibe ...

Being into photography myself, I force myself to take a lot of holiday pictures (in RAW format) and post process those in the week(s) after I return, so I still take a bit of holiday along when work routine kicks in again.

Can you relate or share a totally different approach to keep the good holiday vibes going?

[Barbara Szczesniak]

Lovely pictures, @Walter Buggenhout!

One of my ways to ease the transition from holidays to work is to return home on Friday or Saturday to give myself time to get used to being back before jumping into work. There's nothing worse than getting home from a holiday at 10PM Sunday and having to get up for work the next day. 

[Walter Buggenhout]

Absolutely true. I also sometimes set my OoO message a day earlier and longer than my actual absence to manage expectations. That tends to help reduce the number of last minute urgent stuff before you leave so you can properly wrap up. And on the other hand/end it frees up some time to catch up after the return.

[Shawn Doyle - ReleaseTEAM]

There is nothing worse than coming home late Sunday to work on Monday, I agree. Yet I do this to myself over and over again.

[James O_Connor]

Awesome photos @Walter Buggenhout - that definitely looks like a great holiday!

I have never been able to master the trick of 'easing in' to holidays, it always ends up being a final few days of panic and screaming followed by a hard stop where I switch my laptop off and turn notifications off on my phone. On the return, I usually try to keep the holiday vibe going with music - I'm always on the lookout for new music when I'm travelling and when I find something I love, listening to that track or album takes me back to wherever I heard it first. For example, hearing Chiara Civello takes me back to a tiny restaurant in Sardinia from about fifteen years ago - I can almost taste the gorgonzola gnocci that I was eating at the time...

If I don't end up finding anything new, I'll create a holiday playlist that does the same job.

[Amanda Barber]

Thank you so much for posting this week, @Walter Buggenhout - beautiful pictures!

We squeezed in a few more bits of fun this weekend before school starts on Tuesday. Friday, we went to a favorite summer activity called Bookworm Gardens. It's a botanical garden with children's book themed gardens located throughout. It's always been a favorite of mine and my own kids - this year, we introduced our newest cousin to it!

Yesterday, we spent the day exploring a Deer Park where we got to feed and pet deer. Then, we stopped in our state's capitol for an event called Taste of Madison. It was busier than we expected, but we still ate some great food and enjoyed the beautiful weather.

Today, I took my oldest kiddo and their friend to an amusement park that we have season passes to. 

I'm grateful for one more day off to catch up on all the weekend chores and cleaning. Haha!