It’s mid-summer. In about a month both kids will be moving into their college housing for the year. And though neither of them are here this summer, and I’m feeling all the realities of empty nesting, it’s not really “real” until mid-August.
But with my husband and I both here all summer and both of us working from home and the puppy literally driving me batty, we knew we had to plan a trip. I couldn’t just sit here and stare at the empty space and miss all the comings and goings of the kids and have to wrangle the puppy for a walk everyday. We needed an off-the-grid, away-from-home-responsibilities vacation.
We knew we wanted to visit our daughter in NYC so we did that. It was a blast. We ate good food she picked out, she and my husband debating which train to take every time we had to go somewhere (they are clones of each other in this regard and for the record, both trains would get us to the same place), we got to see some of her friends from college who are there for the summer (or visiting the same weekend!) and we got to see some family. My husband worked a lot while we were there but I mostly took time off and enjoyed the city. I truly love NYC. Public transportation, walking 30,000 steps a day, eating fantastic food – and we saw the Broadway musical “MJ.” It was fantastic.
Then came Amsterdam. There a lot of places in the world I’ve not yet been and this was an easy one to get to. We loved it. Of course, I ate up all the history including the Anne Frank House. My favorite part though? My favorite part of the trip was the true brain break I gave myself. I’m a planner. I’m usually in control of what the family does – what’s for dinner, when I need laundry downstairs, what time the puppy last pooped, what the family holidays will look like. But when we go on vacation I drop all responsibility and hand it over.
Fortunately for me I married a travel snob and I mean that in the best way. My husband travels a lot for work so we take advantage of his Delta and Marriott points and everywhere we go they give him free stuff and thank him for his Diamond Medallion, Titanium, Platinum, King of the World status. He enjoys picking hotels and getting the best upgrade he can. He enjoys playing the upgrade game with the flights to get us the most comfortable seats at the lowest price possible. He enjoys picking the restaurants. And you know what I enjoy? Doing none of this. I become completely brainless and unopinionated on these trips. He’ll ask “do you want this restaurant or that restaurant?” I don’t care. “Do you want to walk or get an uber?” I don’t care. “Do you want to go this way or that way?” I don’t care. And frankly, I don’t even know. I have never had a sense of direction. The joke is he could be walking me around in circles and I would have no idea. Nor would I care.
So when I say I took a break, I mean I took a BREAK. My brain was so turned off that to fall asleep each night I was watching episodes of Love Island my daughter told me to download.
So when I came back and got back into the swing of things, my productivity was there, my mind was sharp and I was back to doing what I do – at the level I expect of myself.
If you’ve gone on vacation but still checked in on work from a different time zone, that’s a trip, not a vacation. Know the difference.
I highly recommend booking a vacation and having something to look forward to that will bring you joy – and a break. Even if just for a weekend away. It’s so important and I always say no one is going to tell you to do it. They’ll work you to death if you let them. So book it. Plan it. Enjoy it.
Today we are booking flights home from dropping our youngest at college for the first time so if you’re looking for me, I’m currently huddled in a corner with a box of tissues rewatching his Bar Mitzvah montage.
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