It Takes As Long To Get Back, As It Did To Get Away
Have you ever said, “I need another vacation!” after your vacation?
We just came back from two weeks of a wonderful vacation.
Seashells from the sea shore
Before we left, we used a runway of a couple of weeks to prepare.
Packing our clothes. Packing supplies for the beach cottage. Putting a hold on mail delivery. Arranging for call coverage. Changing work messages. Checking the car for long distance travel. Loading up the bike rack and bikes. Arranging things for the person watching our house and our cats.
Now that we are back, we are undoing all those things, unspooling them; which is its own set of tasks.
Unpacking. Extra laundry. Sorting through all the mail and messages that accumulated. Taking down the bike rack. Cleaning up the bikes. Cleaning the sand out of the beach stuff before we pack it away for next time. Getting back into our regular routines.
After a week or so away on vacation, I start coming up with ideas. Ideas for work. Ideas for home. Ideas for the future.
I come back with tons of ideas for new projects.
But it takes as long to get back, as it did to go away.
The best, most sanity preserving thing I can do is to write those new project ideas down, and then let them sit for two more weeks.
We needed a runway of two weeks to take off, and we need a runway of two weeks to roll back in.
I use the two weeks after I travel to deal with what has piled up in our absence; and to glide back into our regular routines.
I do not take on anything new, for two weeks after I get back.
If it took you two weeks to get ready to go, it’s going to take you two weeks to catch up to your regular commitments once you get back. Never mind anything new. 99% of the time, it can wait. Really.
Giving myself the gift of using my post-vacation time to truly catch up, rather than start new things, is one of the kindest things I have ever done for myself.
Try it next time you travel, or next time you have a major disruption to your usual routines.
It takes as long to get back, as it did to get away.
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