Ultimate Blog Challenge - What gives you a lot of energy when you do it?

Ultimate Blog Challenge - Day 3's topic is:

What gives you a lot of energy when you do it?

This is an excellent question, especially given the fact that I have trouble falling asleep / sleeping through the night, and I definitely can't claim I wake up refreshed and recovered. 

Still I usually manage to get a lot done during my packed days. Of course, coffee gets proper credit. But there must be more.

Let's take this past weekend.

Saturday I got up at 8am and immediately made my way to the kitchen. While having breakfast, I started to boil water I was going to need for pasta salad. Also at the same time I baked up some frozen bread rolls I was going to need for sandwiches.

You guessed correctly: I was preparing for an away game. 

The average parents' duties ended by the time they dropped their sons off at the home arena at 11:45am.

Not us. We boarded the van that took us to the Southernmost town of the Italian part of Switzerland, a route that is notoriously congested, and especially so on the first day of fall break. 

Instead of 2.5 hours on a perfect day, it took us 4 hours. Sadly this didn't leave us with any time to stop and enjoy the scenic view. Best I could do was a shot out of the window. However, for your viewing pleasure, here's a picture I took a few years back, plus a blog post about this special area.

The guys had just enough time for a quick warm-up off-ice and then retired to the locker room where we handed out the match jerseys.

Yes, we gave our debut as player support staff. 

It was intense. Hubby worked the bench door while I was filming the game. For intermission I made ice packs and headed to the dressing room where I sliced apples and refilled water bottles.

The game was crazy. So many fist fights and penalites that caused lenghty discussions. We finally departed an hour later than usual. Fortunately on our way back, traffic was moderate, and we managed to get back to the arena by 11:30pm. A good 50 minutes later we arrived at home.

Was I tired? You bet? It was a good kind of tired though.

The next day I think I got up around 7:30am, and first up started the first load of laundry. 

I finished two blog posts and processed my video footage from the night before:

Packed up the freshly washed match jerseys, drove to the arena, hung them where they belong, went to dinner with friends, attended the "grown up" teams' game that not only went into overtime, but a shootout, celebrated this narrow win and went home. 

Bed at midnight.

Back at the office on Monday morning.

Talk about energy.

Apart from the houshold chores, all these activities did not drain, but fueled my energy, if that makes sense. 

Why? They're things I like to do with people that are nice to work with. 

Photo Credit without Quote: Marissa Grootes on Unsplash

The massive mental load gave me some anxiety though. I am not medically trained, and I was hoping nobody would get injured beyond the need of ice packs (10 used), headache meds (7 requested) or muscle-ache relieving lotion (1 applied).

How about you? What gives you a lot of energy when you do it?