Unplugging & Resetting

Hello everyone 👋

And end. This is officially the last weekend of summer — the weather feels just a little bit colder, the morning coffee a little bit warmer, and the need to stay in bed a little bit stronger. Here’s to a great upcoming academic year.

That’s what I’ve taken away from my time apart from the internet, emails, and requests for calls. This kind of ties into my newsletter last week on managing expectations. This week was just laissez-faire — no routine, no set schedule, and best of all, no expectations. It was definitely therapeutic to say the least.

My family and I left to Arrowhead Provincial Park on Tuesday, the first of three nights apart from the warmth of my bed and a clean, flushable toilet. Trust me, a toilet that flushes is something adjacent to heaven once you’re apart from it. We set up our tents, built a fire, and cooked some food. Over the course of the four days, I barely checked my phone (<2min per day) and was completely offline. It was great.

We spent the next three days hiking around the park, kayaking, swimming, and burning lots of firewood. I made the mistake of packing for warmer conditions, so let’s just say I was glued to the fire.

I came back to over 150 messages, 60 emails in my inbox (I usually have 0-5 emails), and a couple of missed calls. I guess this just goes to show that life goes on, with or without you. Too many times, we all get sucked in to this downward spiral of letting the demands of life and work control how we actually want to spend our time. I mean, the ideal is that we enjoy what we do and I’m personally grateful to fall into that category. But even then, it gets tiring sometimes, and sometimes it’s difficult to realign yourselves with the initial motivations. It’s a dangerous path when what the pressures of the world masks itself as what you think you want for yourself (ie. do you really want to pursue X career, or is that something you want to do just because all of your friends are doing it).

Taking a step back, I would even suggest going as far as going offline for a couple of days, was really good for me. I had the opportunity to just hear my own thoughts and listen to what my priorities were. It couldn’t have come at a better time as I was trying to figure out how on earth I would be able to juggle all of my commitments that I have lined up for the year. I had the opportunity to make sure that everything that I was signing myself up for were things that I was passionate about for myself and not for other people/the world.

So yes, school starts for me (and many of my readers) in a couple of days. If at all possible, just take this weekend off. Spend some time outdoors and/or away from the internet and people. Be with yourself. You may find some clarity and some new kindled direction for this upcoming year :)

We’ll start this back up next week. See you then :)

I really appreciate you for being a part of The One Percent today! if you are enjoying this newsletter, I’d love for you to share this with a friend or two by hitting the share button below. I’ll see you back here again in a week’s time!