Staycation

So it’s been awhile since I had a proper vacation. I travel a bunch for work, but that doesn’t count if you don’t take time off. I’ve been pretty good about making it overseas once a year…except recently. This is what my log of trips should have been.

2012 Greece
2011 Northern Italy
2010 Paris
2009 Sweden/Frankfurt
2008 Spain/Portugal
2007 India
2006 Moved to Boston

But 2012 and 2011 are fictional. I had the opportunity to go since my brother was doing some academic work for a month each summer. He was renting a house and I could have had a place to crash. But in 2011, I had just started my new job so didn’t have the vacation time accrued, nor was it a smart professional move. And in 2012, I was all gung-ho to go when I was suddenly faced with purchasing my place which meant my savings were redirected for the down payment. No regrets, but I am in desperate need of a break.

I still want to plan a trip and am trying to figure out how to back-end a vacation on a work trip. I did that with the Paris and Sweden trips. I was traveling for work, business class, to Abu Dhabi with layovers in Europe. Much more economical since you could expense most of the travel to the project. But I don’t have anything concrete planned yet and am needing a break.

Works been very successful. But with success comes more demands and higher expectations (both internally placed and externally). I’ve come up with solutions, but unfortunately, my major solution - getting approval to hire some key positions, has not come to fruition yet - challenging to find the right person. Basically, I’m getting burnt out. My day is basically arriving at work in the morning, starting to tackle emails - interruptions with phone calls, meetings and walk bys with people and me trying to keep projects on task. By 5 pm I finally have some time to tackle some of my work accumulated from those phone calls, meetings and walk bys. It’s not a good long term approach to work. I could be more efficient with handling everything if I could get some work done on the foundation items. Develop my repertoire of tools.

About a month ago, my body was yelling at me and I had to come up with a short term solution until my grand plan fell into place. All I could come up with was blocking off the first week I didn’t have any commitments scheduled. And low and behold, I’ve been able to hold that week free of meetings, trips, calls, etc. And that week is next week.

I’m already counting down the days. My plan is to not take a complete week of vacation, but rather the appearance of vacation. Allowing me to crank on some fundamentals that need attention. The only challenging thing is I work most effectively on my computer at work. But I think I have a work around for that. This morning I wrote up two lists. All the projects I’d like to tackle for work. And all the projects I’d like to tackle for home (painting, sewing, etc). It’s at least a month’s worth of work! I’m thinking that I can work on discrete projects, focused without the million little things that interrupt me in the day to day. I’ll be able to catch up on sleep, not be exhausted from work demands, get refocused and be completely offline. I can work on a home project and then switch over to a work project - keeping a nice balance. And the great thing is that I can turn it all into vacation time if that’s what the body/mind needs. It’s a pretty good plan all things considered with what I was working with.

The challenging part is this last haul. Trying to wrap up key items this week before I head off. Getting everything prepped for when I’m gone. I was torn on canceling my “staycation” since I have new staff starting on Monday. But I was good and worked out a solution where I’m not needed in person. I’m important, but not that important!

I really can’t wait. I’m almost more excited about this “vacation” than I was about those others. I’ve set one main goal - to get rid of my grey hair. They start popping up when I’m stressed and tired. But go away once I’m rejuvenated. Let’s see if I can achieve my goal!