This was supposed to be a post about the fantastic time I had in Turkey, but the week following my return has been a bit of a nightmare. On Tuesday I found out something awful about one of my relatives that I don’t really want to go into, but it was tough to deal with – not least because of the shock element. On top of that work got increasingly difficult throughout the week, culminating in a massive problem which lasted the whole of Friday. People ended up saying to me ‘Jenni, just GO HOME’.

So I did. A hard week for most people involves going home and having a glass of wine and probably a bit of a moan at someone about it. A hard week for me is a huge internal battle to stay in control of myself. I’m proud to say I managed it though, and in a constructive and healthy way.

After a quick pit stop at home to get changed, I headed straight to the gym for a brief workout. Physically speaking it wasn’t the best or longest workout I’ve done by a long way, but I needed it mentally and it made a huge difference in releasing a lot of my stress. I came home, changed again and went out for a meal with Joe. Our local Indian restaurant has been closed for a while for refurbishment, and we booked a table for its reopening to see what it was like. The food was just as good as ever, the restaurant itself looks a lot more modern now, and the owner kept walking round proudly asking everyone what they thought and providing little anecdotes about the process (bless him).

By the time we’d eaten and got back I was much happier, albeit exhausted. Joe insisted I go to bed and it was definitely the right thing to do – I woke up on Saturday feeling refreshed and ready for the haircut and shopping I had planned.

New haircut:

I literally woke up, got out of bed and took that photo, which is why my hair looks messy and my face looks grumpy. I’ve lost almost half the length of my hair; this is about the shortest it ever gets. My head feels a lot lighter now and whilst it’s going to take me a while to get used to, I’m going to be even more grateful about it come summer.

Shopping-wise, I’d only planned to buy some new shoes for the wedding I’m going to next week, but I ended up buying a top, a wedding card, a box of chocolates and then I went food shopping. By the time I got back home I was exhausted again (half stress, half the fact I walked about five miles) and ended up watching TV and napping on the sofa. It made it much harder for me to stay asleep last night, but I woke up this morning feeling a lot more like myself.

The main problem I have is that I still don’t feel like I’ve caught up from being on holiday. My plan for the rest of today is to clean the house, finish putting away my stuff, catch up on emails and PMs, start a blog post about Turkey and get in a visit to the gym. When my house is messy, my clothes aren’t put away and things aren’t clean, I automatically have underlying stress. So today is Project Cleanup, and I’ll be back with a much more organised (and better written) blog post at some point early next week. Fingers crossed next week is a lot more positive!