Today is the first vacation day I have taken all year. I started feeling the 'want' of vacation in June but couldn't take the time off. Same in July. In August the want was becoming a 'need'. I was getting run down and tired, going to bed earlier and waking up later. Irritations became frustrations became angry overr little things. I penciled in this time off several weeks ago and solified my plan by purchasing a plane ticket to see to wonderful friends in Tampa. Of course a triathlon is involved for one of them.
As the days ticked down towards my departure of course my business stress didn't just tick up, it skyrocketed. Usually for me, I skate out easy but return to all sorts of mess actual and perceived. This time it seems the stress was all front loaded, like when your climbing up a steep grade on your bike and right when you reach the top and think your done you see that road actually turns and climbs more steeply for several hundred more yards.
As I sat at the terminal I debated on going home. Bagging the trip to finish work. Then I recalled all those stories I heard from other military vets about how hard it was to go on R&R when their friends were staying on the front line trying to survive. I even had a fleeting thought of having them turn the plane around as we taxied. But I just had to give it up. I need the break.
The first day of vacation is almost over now. I'm sitting in a yogurt bar drinking French press coffee after driving around most of Tampa's outskirts eating some great food, enjoying on again, off again rain and a whole lot of coffees. But it doesn't feel like vacation yet, it feels like I am running errands in a different part of town.
It will still take me probably another day or so to get the stress out of my blood, a few days longer than had I gone on vacation earlier in the year. It makes me wish that people got pre-vacation days to decompress from work stress before actually going on vacation. It sucks that I have to feel guilty for time off that I have earned. And man have I earned it.
So next week I will go back to a pile of stress and more work. But today, tomorrow, the next few days, I have to find that place that centers me. It will not come all at once. It will come from finishing a good relaxing lunch instead of eating home cooked leftovers or Subway in the car between locations. It will come from enjoying a hand rolled cigar, something I could never get in my town. It will come from looking into the smiles of friends that are not the friends I see everyday but talk to more often than those people. It will be recognized in random sighs of contentment that will surprise me.
I really have to remember, "It is not enough to exist. I am going to live."
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