Getting Ready for Vacation
Soon my family will be leaving for a two-week vacation to Costa Rica. It’s going to be amazing!
But the preparations for this amazing trip have been arduous. At home, virtually all my leisure time is spent figuring out dog-care, cat-care, yard-care, arranging for some international students to house-sit….not to mention all the details of our travel itinerary and related finances. I really haven’t been blogging, tweeting or Facebooking in the last month. Instead, I’m researching hotels, B&B’s, ‘casitas,’ surf schools and local travel. (This is fun ‘work,’ it’s just time-consuming.)
At the office, my workload has taken a sharp uptick as I try to cram in as much work as possible in advance of my trip while knowing much of the rest awaits my return. It’s a busy time with a little growth and a little more churn than usual. I am also conscious that Stacey (who is left to run the department) may likely feel her workload has increased exponentially as well. As much as I would like to avoid it, I know she is going to have a very challenging, busy, possibly overwhelming time in my absence, especially since she goes to school at night and is also studying for her PHR exam later this month.
At this moment in time, I just have to come out and confess: I’m not good at this.
I’m not that good at taking two weeks off without it taking a disproportionate toll on my life Before and After.
And I am only baring my soul because I feel that I can’t be alone in this; there must be many others out there that feel the same way.
I suspect I also have a few friends who have it all figured out, who take vacations in stride, who aren’t fazed by it all, who pace themselves, don’t give in to feeling guilt for leaving. If this is you, I’d really love to hear from you. Please share your wisdom with the rest of us so that we may vacation in peace.
How do you do it? How do you make it look so easy? What can we do to be more like you?
photo by jetpunk.com
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I wish I knew. I’m going on vacation soon for the first time since becoming a blogger/internet networker/smartphone user/etc. I’m looking forward to the responses.
Paul Smith´s last [type] ..A Tool By Any Other Name
well krista and others, for what it’s worth, here is one perspective/approach:
all the planning you describe has one common thread, and that is, you are problem solving. nothing wrong with that of course, and i know from my own experience that better planning equals a better trip (usually). but here is my question: are you seeing the problems of planning your trip as a “test”? and if so, are you eager to get an “A”? or some sort of perfect score?
what academic training does to us is it demands that we answer all the questions correctly and not make mistakes. this isn’t necessarily the best approach to other stuff.
again, planning is good, but too much planning is not. I was once in rio de janeiro and i just happened to meet some strangers on the beach who told me about a local concert, i went (no tourists anywhere!), and it was great.
the stuff in the brochures is great but there is always “local flavor” that is not in any guidebook.
there is tremendous pressure and training on us all to answer all questions and study and prepare, but for me the best part of travel is the unexpected part of yourself that you discover on site.
and yes, your assistant will be swamped but he/she may also discover internal resources they didn’t know they had.
your trip doesn’t have to be perfect or perfectly planned to be fabulous. if you get a C+ that’s good enough . . . that’s my humble input/opinion anyway. best, jl
@Paul, we’ll see what helpful comments we get.
@Justin, interesting take. My hubby and I tend not to be overplanners but we did wait til the last minute to book the trip because we couldn’t decide between many fabulous destinations (South Africa? Scotland? Canada? Ethiopia?), so then we had more to do in a short amount of time. And then tying up lose ends at work adds to the pressure.