After saying goodbye to my other two brothers, I locked up the house and went for a shower. I stood under the hot water for a long time after the smoky smell of the fire washed away from my skin and hair just to let my muscles relax. When I was done, I threw on a pair of boxers and slid into bed. My eyes flickered over to the tablet on my nightstand. The screen was dark, but I could almost hear all the emails and messages inside waiting for me to reply.
It was late, but not so late that I couldn’t get some work in. I thought about getting just a little bit done, spending at least part of the night being productive. Even when I wasn’t at the office or the racetrack on any given day, the work didn’t stop. There was far more to be done for the company than just the races themselves, and the messages, questions, and requests never stopped. I started to reach for the tablet, then stopped myself.
I wasn’t going to do it. I’d gotten a rare, treasured night completely off, and I wasn’t going to ruin it by burying myself back in work again. I had the next week free, and then it was back to racing season. Once that started, it was going to be all stress and schedules so busy they were bursting at the seams until the season came to an end. The whole point of taking the time off before the season got underway was to relax, and that was exactly what I was going to do. For the next week, it was all about giving myself the time to chill, rejuvenate myself, and prepare for the inevitable, unavoidable chaos to come.
Rather than picking up the tablet, I called out to my virtual assistant to turn on some music to help me sleep, turned off the lights, and closed my eyes with a long exhale.