My husband and I were streaming “Pretend It’s a City” featuring the inimitable Fran Liebowitz a couple of years ago, and she dropped this on us in Episode 3:
“As far as wanting to go places, I can’t believe people do it for fun. When I’m in airports, and I see people going on vacations, I think, ‘How horrible could your life be? How bad is your regular life, that you think, you know what would be fun? Let’s get the kids, go to the airport, with thousands of pieces of luggage, stand in these lines, be yelled at by a bunch of morons, leave late, be squished all together — and this is better than our actual life.’”
I laughed at the joke, but a little nervously.
I have believed for as long as I’ve been working that life is too short to mete out in vacation accrual. I watched my stepmom work tirelessly her entire career, saving up and spending precious vacation days on destinations both relaxing and culturally rich, only to have her life come to an abrupt halt before she could even retire.
Maybe as a result of witnessing this but also out of wishing to have a choice in the matter, I spent most of my career subscribing to the “do something you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life” theory. I stubbornly repeated this truism to myself and anyone who would listen, even when it didn’t align with my everyday experiences of work.
I loved what I did on paper. I worked extensively with nonprofit organizations, believing in mission and giving back. But the day-to-day? I got anxious about it on Sundays. It often kept me up at night. Much of the experience was unpleasant, from sitting long hours in a stuffy office setting to dealing with people and all of their idiosyncrasies.
Only recently have I started to allow myself to more carefully examine the underpinnings of my relationship to work, and to ask some scary questions of myself. The questions range from, “Am I actually happy in my day-to-day life?” to “If money weren’t an issue, how would I spend my time and energy?”
I feel secure enough in an externally validated sort of success to say now, in my late 30s: I don’t want to sit in front of a glowing laptop most of the time.
I can also much more clearly see how, in retrospect, even though I thought I built a career out of my own volition and vision, much of it was bound by explicit and implicit messages throughout my upbringing. These messages came from within my family, but also our broader culture and all that is infused with it: school, work, institutions, even the arts.
It’s all about production.
School was about working to earn a grade, which added up to a grade point average, which culminated in ability to gain entry into higher education and receive financial aid. Work was about earning a paycheck to pay my own way, yes, but also going to work and clocking in and out was a distinct marker of laboring through adulthood.
There was a way to forge my path within certain parameters, and I chose that way. Yes, it was a bright, blazing way to build a life. But it was tethered to invisible and unexamined expectations, and shame about what might happen if I tried to inhabit a life without ticking certain boxes.
I earned a degree. I lived on my own. I traveled extensively. I worked three jobs simultaneously; I scrapped and I saved. I climbed higher and higher on a career ladder; had full benefits and some amazing perks. I landed a mortgage of my very own. I earned frequent flyer miles flying for work. I ran meetings. I visibly succeeded and visibly failed. My phone blew up with work-related texts during all hours, and I felt both irritated and important.
And then one day I had a panic attack in my kitchen during a particularly stressful time at work, and slowly — very slowly — in the subsequent months and years I realized I needed to make a change.
Thing one that I realized: I love to be outside. It calms me and grounds me. I want to spend more of my finite time on Earth outside, on my own but also with people I love.
Thing two: being creative brings me joy, especially when it’s tethered somehow to the outdoors. I love to mull and write about the many facets of being outside, especially in a way that invites others “in” to the outdoors. I love to focus and paint landscape art, especially in a way that focuses attention on everyday beauty.
Thing three: I find great satisfaction and meaning in being of service to others and to means bigger than me, that give back and build people up. As much as I enjoy figuring out how to craft and bring my own perspective in the world, I also have an ability to both curate and facilitate to make others’ experience better or at least smoother. I find it incredibly challenging and also rewarding to use this ability, and this is more and more what I do during something that most resembles traditional “work,” through consulting.
I realized last weekend that over time, the line between vacation and my real life is getting blurrier. I’m at a point where I am gaining more economic freedom, which is making it easier to decide how I want to spend what is truly the most finite resource: time.
So, I go outside. I write. I paint. I help people get where they want to go in their meetings. I walk and listen to podcasts.
When I do go away on vacation, I think about bringing my easel. It would be nice to be somewhere else for a while, but still doing those things that I love to do.
My day-to-day life is starting to overlap more with my definition of vacation, where the things I normally do are also those things I would like to do on an official break. I think, finally, I’m allowing myself to not only identify, but to build a kind of life that doesn’t leave me desperate for time away.