“Aren’t you always on vacation?”
I hear this constantly, often in half-jest, usually not. It’s hard to explain, especially to my friends who don’t work from home, that my laptop accompanies me on most of my trips, that I carve out time to work even in places that are designed for delight.
But there’s a difference between those trips and vacation, really vacation, the trips that let me unplug from the buzzing world and turn inward, for a while.
In September, a Brown University professor named Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve posted her guidelines for her incoming students on Twitter, and this line in particular leapt out at me: “Working until exhaustion is NOT a badge of honor; it shows that you are out of balance.” It seems obvious, but for students— and especially, for freelancers like me— it’s not always the way we feel like we should live. If you stop working, you’re walking away from money and opportunities, you are the intensity of your hustle. But I don’t believe that. Instead, I believe the professor.
When I think about my priorities, being happy and healthy is at the top, being financially successful (or at least, not feeling like I’m drowning) is up there as well, and making time to be creative ranks high, too. I’ve learned that letting myself NOT work has often improved the quality and efficiency of my work, the value of my time, and the scope of my creativity. I try to keep my laptop shut at least one weekend day. I don’t work at night. (I’m a morning person anyway.)
I’ve been giving myself a hard time this year for not being as prolific as I’d like to be, but at the same time, I wrote a personal essay that I am more proud of than most other things I’ve written. And that whole essay was composed on a beach chair by a Mediterranean bay, when I was on an unintentional vacation. (Unintentional because I did bring my computer with me on my trip to Kas, but then never opened it for all four days.) I needed to stop moving, get enough sleep, read a book, and most importantly, give my brain space. And suddenly, that essay came pouring out of me. I don’t think I could have written it if I hadn’t taken a serious break.
I travel regularly, but I don’t consider it a vacation if I’m lugging around the computer to do work. Yes, my trip in Madrid in August was restorative, but I still spent a not-insignificant amount of time researching labor market testing in the UAE, and felt guilty when I wasn’t doing something work-related. Ergo, not a vacation.
Instead, I try to schedule in at least one trip that is undeniably, unabashedly VACATION, which often for me is a trip to Kabak, and often one that is solo. There was a stretch of time when I didn’t go alone; the emotional anxiety rollercoaster of 2016 made me desperate for company to distract from the looping thoughts inside my head, and it wasn’t until 2018 that I returned by myself. In Kabak, I don’t try to have conversations with strangers. Instead, I descend lightly into my own head, read a pile of books, write in my journal, write letters, write essays (hey-o!), take naps. Now that I live alone, I wasn’t sure that I’d need those four days of solitude, but in the honeyed thickness of it, I was grateful. I went swimming in the cerulean sea, floating on my back and listening to the air vibrating with crickets and the lapping of the waves and just taking time to THINK. No phone, no distraction, just the sea. When I come back to reality, to Istanbul’s churn, I’m ready for my full social schedule, for my endless to-do list, for the propulsive push of daily life. But I return centered, salty, and sunbaked, ready for the next wave to crash down.
Early autumn always feels like a new year, a new beginning. The energy palpably shifts, and so do I. After the break, I am ready for the new, I am rejuvenated. To quote a well-worn poem:
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
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