Vacation has a magical quality. I don’t necessarily mean the coming home relaxed mostly although that is nice. It’s magical because it gives you perspective. The kind of perspective impossible to achieve when you’re in the trenches of your own life. Vacation allows you to hold how you felt while away against how you feel now that you’re back and compare. Leaving makes you understand things about returning that you never could have realized before you left.
Vacation helps me see how vulnerable I feel when I’m in my house. Not vulnerable in the I’m scared for my personal safety but working from home offers you no buffer from the outside world. On vacation, on the other hand, you have a protective wall. If someone asks me to do something, I don’t have to weigh the do I want to vs do I not want to vs do I have time vs should I make time etc etc. The answer is, “I’m on vacation.” Everyone understands the “I’m on vacation” in a way that they (or I) don’t understand “I work from home.”
There is no protective wall at home. Small things like every time a doorbell rings I bounce between guilt and anger about whether I should answer it or if I am being rude for not answering it. So I answer it and then immediately regret it every single time when I have to tell a salesperson no. People with the protection of a cubicle don’t have to deal with salesperson (other than their own) between 9-5.
Most of these are small things. Small things in an already pretty good life. But they add weight in a curious way. And when you come home from feeling weightless, you can be acutely aware of how they begin to add up. And you can also begin to imagine how those things have affected and will affect your creative process.
Sound familiar? I’m guessing a lot of it does
What do you notice after you get home from vacation? Anything you’re working on changing?