It started with the need to make it to Christmas, then make it to the end of January…then the relaxation would begin, at least that was the plan. December was a blur of deadlines parties and presentations. It seemed as if the ‘end’ would never arrive and when it did… I crashed, not in the physical sense, but pretty much in every other way…

3 weeks of stress in January and then I was sitting in Heathrow waiting for a flight to Japan. Of course I had great plans, I always have great plans, then well… things happen, I make excuses in my head, justify why I can’t do the things I had planned and somehow I manage to convince myself that everything is indeed OK. This time was going to be different, of course it was, I was travelling on my own, I could plan my own time and I wanted to do this… right?

Why the need for change? Well you get to point I guess when you start to look at your life and think, what have I *actually* done? Who have I helped in life? Have I added value in any single way to the lives of those around me? I am not sure that I have at all… Now I am not about to go out and start randomly hugging folks, so maybe I am on the brink of the much fabled midlife crisis.. 🙂

My belief system tells me to start on the inside and work from there, so I was keen to put some pretty serious plans together and Okinawa was the point where I was going to put my planning into practice. Not even the week of the trip was I in a place to make all these things happen. Work had me running around like a blue arse fly and for some reason all the big internal presentations came in the same week. Oh, and to make life even more ‘interesting’ I had a medical procedure as well. Nothing huge but massively personal. So Okinawa was the big step change.

Well for once I have kept my plans… just a wee bit, but the big one, the dry January, that’s in the bag I have completely abstained and to add to that I am doing my meditation and eating the odd vegetable. Who knows, I might actually mange to find the ‘centre’ that the super balanced people talk about…