In a matter of hours, my vacation will be over. It’s been only two weeks, but when I arranged my vacation I felt I desperately needed a break. Now, here at the end of it, I wonder, as many times before, if it was worth it, or even effective.
What preceded it
The busiest period of the year at my work is from October, November until the middle of March. It’s a ramping up to a week of activities in March that requires a lot of planning, organizing and preparing.
Since business as usual continues as well in that period, there is a compounded workload. There is a break from mid December to maybe the second week of January, but that vacation, somewhat forced, since there wouldn’t be another opportunity for a break for at least three months, wasn’t a happy experience either.
I don’t like to take time off when everyone else is also free. It feels like an obligation. Add to that the fact that I don’t really know how to use or enjoy a vacation. I seem to always need a goal, some task to finish.
The (let’s call it) Christmas break wasn’t any different. Over the years I have shot many tapes of Hi8, Digital8, and DV. Most of them were not digitized at the time and they’ve always been a nag in the back of my head. So I decided to take a large chunk of my two weeks off and devote it to this work. Didn’t work. Old technology versus new technology. Spent many hours, deep into the night. Not worth spilling more ink over this than that. I was miserable.
Come the second week of January, it was back to work. Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy my work, I have a lot of freedom and as far as jobs go, it’s not bereft of meaning and impact. But that first quarter of the year is insanely busy. The chaos and stress of the previous years was mitigated this time around due to all the preparations, structural improvements and formalized processes. Even so. Lot of work.
The busy period culminated, some minor mishaps and unforeseen catastrophes were overcome. The week was about as successful as we could have hoped. I was drained. I wanted or needed a break. I couldn’t tell exactly, but I felt some urgency. Of course there were circumstances that made it somewhat difficult to leave at that moment, but there is literally never a moment when that is not the case.
So I booked a week off.
The Vacation
I knew that anything resembling real rest was an illusion. There were so many things I needed or wanted (again, not sure which of those two is accurate) to do, chip away at my personal to-do list. I had an overview,,and, naively, I thought I could get all of it done in a day or two. Then I would have the rest of the week to chill, maybe go outside even. Live life.
I’m not saying that all is folly, but my estimation sure as shit was. I spent a lot of time looking up stuff on the internet, talking, arguing, getting extremely frustrated with AI, software, developers, the world. It took me two full days to finish just the first item on my to-do list.
The others that followed mirrored, more or less, the process of the first item. A lot of research, getting frustrated, long, very long days (and let’s be honest, quite a few full nights) before I was able to also check the rest of the things off my to-do list. I guess that was the only win that week, I was indeed able to finish the things I wanted to do, to a good degree of satisfaction.
However, the week was over, I had switched day for night and I was more exhausted than before the week began. So I did some soul-searching and decided to add another week of vacation. I had plenty of days and would still have a little less than 3 weeks left, if I wanted to take another vacation later in the year.
As the second week of my vacation started, I was still in my reversed rhythm. The things I had wanted to do, produce some music, go out for a walk, do some photography, see some friends, maybe even go somewhere -I always have this fantasy of “going somewhere” whenever I have time off, go to the beach, visit some burial stones or a national park or something. I never do-, but what I needed to do was sleep.
This reversal of night and day is a thing with me. I seem to be unable to refrain from letting myself slip. I get obsessed over a task, and I just need to finish it, even if it means that after some 20 hours I have to give up, exhausted and continue after some sleep. Before I know it, I have slipped into this natural, chaotic mode I inhabit, where even the notion of a circadian rhythm is a cruel joke.
Monday was gone, Tuesday I felt numb and desperate to feel something. To not give in to my urges and make a bad decision or two, I decided to spend money and buy an iPad. I didn’t really need one, but I sort of wanted one, and it was perhaps a better way to spend money than other things I was toying with in my mind.
I spent the rest of my Tuesday (and yes, most of the night) setting up the iPad, again becoming supremely frustrated with the lackluster experience it provided. Especially in contrast to my other Apple computers and gadgets. I decided to return it on Wednesday and get my money back. Figuring I could still make some really questionable decisions when the money would be refunded the next day.
Feeling wild and unruly, I decided to open a bottle of wine and drink. A glass, maybe two, since these days I get a headache after just one. Yeah, life changes when you get old, kids. Enjoy it while you can. It was a bottle I was gifted at the wine shop, where I spent a couple of hundred euros the week before (one of the items on the to-do list -buy wine for when I have company, my cellar was nearly empty). I did not like the taste at all and I decided to give it away to some of the students in my building.
I had been torturing myself the entire day with the reproach that I hadn’t even turned on the studio and at least try to make some music. So before the student picked up the bottle, I set myself a ticking clock to switch on all the gear and get ready to produce something. I succeeded, the doorbell rang, I gave away the bottle and returned to the studio.
On the sequencer there was a project from a month or two ago, when a friend stayed over for a bit. I had looked at the project only once since, but hadn’t done anything with it. So now, letting the sequencer play, I wasn’t too displeased and decided to use this project as a starting off point. Many hours later I had a new track. The first in a couple of months, where not too long ago, I would produce one or two new tracks every week. Nevertheless there was some satisfaction.
In between all of these things, I had been researching some questions about mortgages, pension and becoming an entrepreneur, parallel to my current job. This took up a lot of time as well, and I guess I at least could call my vacation productive, since I ticked a lot off my to-do list, and my to-research list. There are still some questions unanswered, but at least I have formulated the questions now.
Early in the second week, I guess I was truly exhausted, because one morning I woke to find that I had slept for a solid nine and a half hours. My sleep had been uninterrupted and zombie-like. The refreshment I felt upon waking soon gave way to a suspicion that there was something less fun on my horizon, as a deep and intense pain began to manifest itself under my right shoulder blade.
It didn’t take long for my suspicion to become reality and for me to be in quite an extraordinary amount of pain. I guess lying in position for over nine hours might strain some muscles. I was in so much pain that breathing in hurt, which led me to take only short breaths, which in turn made me lightheaded. I stumbled for the kitchen cabinet where I keep my pain meds and took 1000 mg of paracetamol and 600 mg of ibuprofen. Over the next couple of hours, my pain slowly subsided.
The Thursday of the second week was my only real vacation day. I hadn’t slept very long that night and I was lazy and tired. I decided to give in to this feeling and do one of my favorite things, I went back to bed in the daytime, put on the playlist of my ambient tracks and turned the volume up loud. For the next three to four hours I just lay there, listening to the abstract soundscapes I’d produced, drifting in and out of sleep and dreams. Very relaxing.
In the evening a friend invited me for a walk, which was the highlight of my week. We walked for about 5 kilometers and just talked.
Today is the last day of my vacation. I just woke up after just over 5 hours of sleep, and I’m standing at the kitchen counter typing this as I’m toasting some bread. The sun is out in full force and it is going to be a warm day. I’m not sure what I’ll do today, but I’m really tired. First I’ll eat some breakfast and then I guess I’ll just drift through the hours waiting for the day to finish. Perhaps I’ll get a little more sleep.
I really don’t know how to do vacation.