I’ve always been a work-a-holic. As with many people I find it difficult to just sit and do nothing. If I go to the beach, I have to be swimming to some predetermined location. If I go to the mountains, I have to be hiking and taking pictures. If I go on a road trip, I have to be going somewhere. It’s difficult for me to simply enjoy the moment that I am in. I get bored and restless. So as a result, I spent most of my life working to reach some goal. When I was in high school, I earned money for college. When I was in college I worked for a degree. When I had a degree I got a job so I could support a family. I don’t have a family so in the end I find myself with nothing to work for. So I’m switching it to working for the weekend. I needed to learn how to take a vacation. I needed to learn how to enjoy life around me. I found that I had lived in Southern California all of my adult life and had never driven an hour to see Joshua Tree National Park… I had wasted years and then it was time to fix that.
The first step to learning how to take a vacation is to learn to leave work. I went into work and blocked out everything past 5:00. Then when people actually scheduled meeting past them the hard part came. I declined the meetings. It was stressful at first and my boss didn’t understand (he’s a work-a-holic too), but after several months I found that people didn’t care that I left work at 5. For crying out loud we laud the flex hours we have available!
The next step was to learn to take a day off. My bucket list came in handy for this. I took my calendar, and took my bucket list and decided I would do something on my bucket list one weekend out of the month. And that would take a Friday off. So I scheduled three Fridays off, put in the vacation requests, got them approved and then took the day off. It was difficult as I’m bored if I had nothing to do. But, the bucket list gave me something to do so I was still engaged in some activity and not bored.
As I finished up the bucket list of things around town, I needed to travel more. So I decided to go out of town. This required two days off and I found it much easier to do than before. I discovered that what I was actually doing is setting boundaries between my professional life and my personal life. I also found that come Monday morning (or the next day in the office), I had a much more exciting weekend than my colleagues. Most people like to sit at home. Using a bucket list and challenging your comfort zone allows you to experience more joy and fulfillment out of life.
Now some people have a profession that allows them to just go and take a week or two off. A friend of mine, who is a chef, had a break because her kitchen shutdown for winter. So she saved up some money beforehand and headed to Ireland and visited there for a few weeks. If you have that opportunity go for it… If it’s hard to set boundaries, try what I did and see if it works for you.
Some interesting places I’ve been since I started doing this are:
- Visiting the Valley of Fire
- Hiking the Grand Canyon
- Hiking Glacier Point, Lower Yosemite in Yosemite
- Visiting the Sequoia National Park
- Hiking Vernal Falls, Nevada Falls, Illouiouette Falls, Glacier Point, and Sentinel Dome in Yosemite
- Rock Climbing in Joshua Tree
- Visiting the Devils’ Golf Course, Artist’s Drive, The Lowest Point in the US in Death Valley
- Hiking Longs peak in Colorado
- Hiking Zion’s Emerald Falls, Angel’s Landing, and Temple of Sinawava.
- And Many More…