Self - Retreatment

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ 

Dengan menyebut nama Allah yang Maha Pengasih lagi Maha Penyayang

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I was known among my friends, to be the one who traveled a lot - the one my friends kept coming to ask for some travel recommendations etc. Airlines' websites used to be the most visited web on my browser's history (especially Air Asia), I'd almost never missed Air Asia's promotion - I'd grab at least one promo ticket, the cheapest one I could get. Travelling - was my one and only guilty pleasure, so I would usually keep track of my schedule and to have at least once place to travel within 2-3 months gap (6 months gap, max).

But now? Travelling is the last item on my to-do list. The last time I travelled overseas was last year.... April or May? I even donated my blood 3 times in a row because of that gap (you have to observe 3-4 months period after each donation, if you're back from overseas and then you have to observe at least one month gap before you can donate. Check out here). 

And so because I couldn't travel (couldn't relive my so-called passion), I felt so restless. I had no motivation, dragged my feet to come to work. I had to indulge into something else, other than travelling, I had to choose to do something cheap - like joining some running races, binging on comfort food, and sometimes shopping stuff online (blergh I so hate the fact that I like to do online shoppings!).

It been a year, so from day to day I kept looking forward to the days that I could take loads of annual leave!

It so happened that my life became quite dramatic this year. From leaving the office to not leaving the office, and then Mak had to had her renal stone operation - and so that's it! I took mak's operation as an excuse to take my two weeks leave.

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It does not hurt to take a break once a while.

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I kept telling myself, it's okay to take the leave - not that I deserved it, but it was so much needed. Not only I was tired of whatever happened, my positive energy, too, was slowly draining.

I think it is important to take a break sometimes, and I would like to put a term on that - self-retreat. Retreat from whatever we are currently doing. It's not to be seen as a form of weakness (of course, as we know retreat could also mean surrendering), but it's as a strategy. I think in wars, too, retreat means calling back all armies to reshuffle war strategies. 

So I treated my two-weeks holiday as a self-retreatment; where I collected all my thoughts and strategies - what to do, what have I done so far, what should I do after this and all. It's such a refreshing idea to treat the holiday like that (or otherwise we'll usually have the travel blues upon coming back to work, amirite?)

Also, bila bercuti kita kembali ke normal state kita. Zero base semula.

So..

Here's to not giving up, here's to taking loads of self-retreatment so we could empower ourselves more!

p/s: I'm not sure if I said above makes any sense but I hope they do!