I disagree with the way we talk about vacation like it’s a rescue mission.
As if we are supposed to grind ourselves into a fine powder for eleven and a half months, then disappear for a week and call that balance.
Is rest is something we earn only after proving we can survive without it?
That question causes me nausea just typing it.
That model has never really worked for me.
Maybe it’s because I’ve spent so much of my life designing systems, watching what happens when people build around pressure instead of 360° of empathy. Eventually, the person breaks. The team breaks. The thing that looked productive was often just delayed collapse.
I don’t want to need a vacation from my life.
I want to build a life I don’t have to escape from so dramatically.
That doesn’t mean every day is peaceful. It doesn’t mean work stops being hard, or family stops being complicated, or the world suddenly becomes reasonable. It means care has to become a daily practice.
Take the walk now.
Drink the water now.
Say no before resentment becomes your personality.
Sit in the quiet before your body has to force you there.
Laugh at something dumb.
Let something be unfinished.
Relax, not because you are done, but because you are human.
The older I get, the less interested I am in heroic exhaustion. I don’t want to be praised for ignoring my own limits. I don’t want burnout to be mistaken for commitment. I don’t want to wait until I’m wrecked before I remember I have a body, a nervous system, a family, a life.
So maybe the better goal is not “take more vacation.”
Maybe it’s: stop abandoning myself so often that vacation becomes the only place I can find myself again.
Rest should not be a destination. It should be built into my daily design.