Three days into a five day long weekend and I am yet to undertake a social activity of significant duration.

It’s fantastic and has happened at a very opportune time. It wasn’t even planned!

Just to be clear, I haven’t been living a hermit-like existence. This is because I have a dog. She is the reason for the limited interaction I’ve had with people so far. Otherwise there would have been even less.

I’ve chatted with dog walkers, the tai-chi ladies that I usually see in the mornings (who wondered why I was late on Friday so I explained in a mix of English, Cantonese and the International Language of Charades that it was actually a holiday), some neighbours, a couple of people at the shops where I bought hot cross buns and some seafood for the weekend, my ex, and via the phone,  two work colleagues (more on that shortly), a real estate agent and my Mum. Of those people, only the shop people, work colleagues and my Mum were not as a result of sharing my life with a dog. Even that particular real estate agent was due to my dog.

I haven’t shied away from social media and have participated in a variety of Whatsapp group chats, some single chats, Facebook and Tango. I’ve laughed out loud (real as opposed to virtual) at some of the chats and had a giggle at a few others.

Compared to a usual weekend for me, this is definitely at the other end of my social spectrum. I generally chat with a few more people in person or over the phone than this each weekend.

It’s also a rare long weekend where I have stayed in HK.

As a supposed extrovert (based on various assessments I’ve done over the years), that I’ve enjoyed this amount of time by myself may come as a surprise since apparently, extroverts gain their energy from people (still find it funny to think of myself as an extrovert but I guess compared to some others, perhaps I am). Now that I think about it, this does explain why I’m in Human Resources. I’m still thankful that I’ve managed to find a career that I enjoy that I’m also good at (if I do say so myself). This is a bit of a chicken and egg thing though since perhaps I’m good at it since I enjoy it and perhaps I enjoy it since I’m good at it. That’s another post perhaps…

Sometimes though, the job at hand overshadows the career itself. This happened to me last week and was also reversed at about the same time.

It was one of those weeks where things were going pear-shaped at work while I was at an offsite. Balancing the demands of both meant quite a few late nights, no sleep-ins (my dog was staying elsewhere while I was in the hotel so generally a great time for a sleep-in) and needing to constantly check my emails given the urgency and importance of what was happening back at the office. Tricky to do when I’m meant to also be paying attention at the offsite and my active participation was expected.

Those of you who know me are already know my views on after hours work, including checking emails – it’s for an emergency only. This was one of those times.

No down time at the conference and then back to the office on Thursday to sort out the remaining issues (which incidentally, are ongoing over the long weekend, partly because Japan doesn’t have one and China’s long weekend is shorter than HK’s). It has also meant taking work calls on Good Friday. Again, not normal for me but given the urgency and that it doesn’t happen often, it’s fine.

At the same time, I’ve been told my role is changing to a project-based one for the next year or so. This is an incredibly exciting opportunity for me. It will be fun, fabulous experience, tiring and may also mean my work/life balance that I am quite protective of, may suffer somewhat. Will have to see how I can avoid that happening. If I’m having a good time doing it, I don’t usually mind so much either and I’ll be working with some fantastic people so it could all balance out based on this alone.

In short, it’s been a huge week where I’ve been working with many people, had my energy drained over the work issues (since they weren’t fun ones, they involved spreadsheets rather than people and it was very detailed), energy built up again, so coming into the weekend, I was exhausted.

I’ve now had a couple of sleep-ins, sent off a variety of work emails and emails for properties (I’m looking at buying a place), read quite a bit including The Testament of Mary (that’s the book club book for this month and seemed appropriate given it’s Easter), wrote, walked, sung and danced, contemplated my belly-button, tried my hand at making a few things I hadn’t really tried before, watched a silly movie, sorted through a couple of drawers, found more stuff to donate (it still is breeding!) and washed the dog.

Did I mention the wine and cheese? Or the hot cross buns and tea / coffee (depending if it’s morning or afternoon of course).

I’m so energised that I’m struggling to keep still long enough to write this.

It’s taken two and a half days and I’m now ready to chat face-to-face again for longer than 15 minutes.

This will be happening tomorrow when I my camera and I have an outing with a friend and her camera.

Happy days!

* Thanks to Billy Idol for the title to this post. He’s currently touring New Zealand.