My recent, lovely holiday in the sunnier north of NSW has led me to ponder the dynamics of winding myself down for holidays and then facing work again at the other end of my time away....
My first day of holiday was generally happy - sleep in, leisurely breakfast on a week day (almost felt naughty), reading, writing to friends, even indulging in some mid-day Dr Phil telling people to "get real!" But there were visual cues that would catapult me back into work-think. My briefcase oh so casually resting by the kitchen bench. My mobile phone that could ring any minute if someone didn't realise I was actually on leave (but then I did do a pretty good job of telling people...!). Or just something to do with the fact that I had been at work the day previously, and some things that were worrying me were still on my mind. I did well to banish these thoughts as much as possible, but didn't succeed completely.
The next day we had packing and the surroundings of the countryside to engage us. This is where the true bliss of being on vacation started to kick in. Being able to let my thoughts wander wherever I wanted, and gradually linger more on those bigger questions:- what do I want to do with my holiday? what do I want to read next? what do I want to learn to do next? what do I want to cook? where do I want to live? did Blur mean that song to sound exactly like a Bowie/Kinks song, or was it subconscious? isn't it interesting how ecosystems change up, down and around mountains? and is there a God*?
And I didn't just think about satisfying my id, which you may have deduced from the first half of the above paragraph - in fact, internal discussions with my ego and super-ego revealed some interesting things. Long drives on highways give you plenty of time to dwell on thoughts that you may or may not wish to have. The hopes you want to fulfil, the things you did that you could have done better, the things you are putting off, the bizarre habits you have taken up, or the things that others did that revealed something interesting about them.
I often wonderered over the past few years - and am pretty sure now - that we, the offspring of Baby-boomers, place to much emphasis on "careers" to make us happy, while our parents just had babies and got on with it. Our current working life is something that we are enduring for a limited time, but not enjoying much. It's a decision we've made with our eyes open, so I will stop whinging about it, but I can't wait for time to move forward about a year!! For now, we'll continue with our rather stressful jobs, as we'd like to save money for later, and roll on, mid-2006!
We've done a pinky finger shake to do our best to snatch moments of fun or escapism in our time away from work, and perfect the art of switching off at the end of the day. I actually think I could do with more time for soul searching, and thinking what sort of person I want to be. This is hard when your work mandate doesn't always let you carry this out, as you're answerable to a chain of 3-4 people above before a decision can be made (ah, bureaucracy!) . Interesting thoughts to meditate on regarding whatever my next paid work or otherwise might be... And hats off to Seagreen to for taking the time out to do this over the past year (correct me if this wasn't part of your motivation!).
The first night back (ie 3 days before returning to work), C-chan had a dream (nightmare?!) about work. By pure denial, I managed to not think about work, but had about 4 dreams last night, and at least 2 of these were about work or used heavy symbolism about work. Doh! The other parts of my dreams are hard to suss out, but some imagery was slightly disturbing:
- visited a part time soft-toy maker who was not quite "all there"
- hiding from someone who was hunting down a sniper on the loose (but i wasn't even guilty or a suspect)
- watching old videos of other people I've known having fun, but knowing I wasn't there (why I had these videos, I don't know, but I think that's beside the point).
Lots of food for thought from the past few weeks - the holiday was timely and thoroughly enjoyable.
* just kidding!
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