Hi friends,
I'm sending you this after a few hours spent at my 9 to 5 job as the management kindly gave us half a day off as a little treat on this last day of the year.
It was the first time in years that I went to work on Dec 31st. I always take the week between Christmas and New Year off. Except this year! Why? Because I used up all 21 days of vacation allowance…by September!
I am grateful that my vacation days were happily spent and that my boss was so understanding when I took them. I got to travel twice this year, and I got to enjoy all the celebrations of my brother's wedding and spend time with loved ones visiting for the summer from abroad. I was even hired to train employees of another company, which was one of the highlights of this year.
However, it did not feel good at all to spend the last three months with 0 days off worrying about delays and so on; this happens to be one of the little things that still annoy me so much as a senior employee with more than 15 years experience, and I hope I will get rid of this issue soon. Consuming my days off too early also felt unaligned with my personality as a good time planner.
One of the reasons I cashed out my leaves was not checking my vacation balance frequently, which I'll ensure I will stay on top of in the new year. I also have an ugly habit that I have not told you about before. Although I wake up early most days, I arrive late almost every Sunday morning! Why Sundays? It's the first workday of the week. My kids are off and stay at their grandparents' house, so there is no early drive to school to worry about. I spend Sunday mornings preparing homework for my kids to do while I am gone. I put one more load in the washing machine for the helper who comes on Sundays to take care of it. I waste time collecting my notebooks. And, of course, the most significant time waster is choosing my outfit in the morning. I'll probably be late if I don't do it the day before.
So, in the last three months, I had to improve my ridiculous Sunday habit by writing Saturday evening
reminders to myself on my phone: (prepare kids' homework, do the rest of the laundry, pick outfit). Otherwise, I'd forget about Sunday morning delays after the busy weekend and feel bad again when I sign in late, which still happened a few times. Also, those silly morning delays add up and impact my annual vacation balance, so no more in 2024.
What about you? Do you have a habit that does not align with your values and identity? What are you going to do about it? You may need some accountability to improve it, so tell somebody about it like I just told you about mine.
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As we close the 2023 chapter of our lives, we take the beautiful moments with us, as hard as it seems to remember them because of the very difficult collective lessons we learned in the last three months as Arabs. We take those with us, too, as a compass for how we want to raise our kids and how to look out for our economy, precious language, and culture.
We take our newfound voices demanding justice and freedom for our brothers and sisters in Palestine.
We take the pain and transform it into art and a new way of living with wide-open eyes and unwashed critical minds.
We share the lessons, teach them, and soon enough, God willing, help Palestinians build their homes again.
Goodbye, 2023; we will remember you as the year we woke up.
