Things at work have slowed down, finally, and for the first time since April I actually have time for a breather. The projected peak season for this year was only supposed to have lasted until July but excruciatingly went on until September. Join me while I sigh wistfully at how vastly different it was last year; our peak season then ended sometime mid-June and we took it all for granted.

Anyway, I digress.

While I am thankful that I have some free time on my hands, it also means that I have the extra time to be stressed about something else. Because apparently, that’s still how I roll. Maybe I’m only able to function at a certain level of stress? If things get too simple maybe I’ll die of boredom. I don’t know.

But yes, I am currently part of a group that is in charge of planning an event for the whole office. It sounds simple but I’m helplessly inexperienced with these types of things because I’ve never actually been one to volunteer for employee engagement activities. But for some reason I can’t quite remember now, earlier this year I decided to give it a go – mostly because my friend was going to do it with me.

Unfortunately some things happened over the course of the past few months that prevented her from being part of the same team, so I’m here now woefully stumbling in the dark. It’s just the proverbial cherry on top of the irony sundae because every (what feels like) blind step I take, there’s this voice in my head saying “she would have done this so much better/quicker/with more people liking her”. And I’m not just saying that because I’m pitying myself or anything; she’s just better at these type of things than I am and being here, doing this, being part of this activity just serves as a constant reminder of why a big chunk of 2016 sucked. I guess it is part of the reason why a part of me can’t let go. While I do want to move on, I am still constantly reminded of plans unfulfilled and selfishly think that this would’ve been easier if she was part of the organizing committee. We did, after all, make a good team.

I’m still very much willing to learn the ropes though I feel like my learning curve is quite steep and there is still the fear of a spectacular failure. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that, since we still have a few weeks to pull this off.

The good thing about being placed outside of my comfort zone is that I’ve started thinking about the changes I’ll make next year. I can’t wait for 2016 to be over.