Your vacation is in your head
Posted August 9th, 2010 by Sheila Scarborough
The epiphany came during a nighttime drive; I crested a rise just south of Sweetwater, Texas and saw a bunch of eerie blinking red lights all across the horizon.
Massive airport runway?
A bazillion cell phone towers?
Aliens?
No, it was the red lights for hundreds of wind turbines on the wind farms that are spread across this section of the Panhandle Plains.
At that moment – free of any responsibilities other than pondering red lights – I felt more relaxed than I have felt in months, and I was nowhere near a beach, a lake, a mountaintop, a drink with an umbrella in it or any of the other typical mental vacation images.
That’s when it hit me: a vacation is a state of mind, not a particular location.
The process of getting ready to back out of the driveway is part of the vacation. It put me in a getaway mindset to simply turn on my email Out of Office (an anachronistic feature when so many of us can access email on our phones if we have to.) I needed to do that because unless I publicly announce, “Hey everyone, leave me alone for a day or so!” then I am compelled to continue shoveling out the IN box all day every day. People expect it, and they should; I’m a freelancer and an entrepreneur and those are the breaks of the “untethered to an office” lifestyle.
The problem is, without a real office door to shut, without co-workers or assistants to hand my work to, there is no vacation. There is no chance to vacate my poor noggin and let it rest.
You must make your own open spaces in your life, when your head can breathe, and until now I have failed miserably to do that.
It took a long drive to Sweetwater (which I will not insult by calling it the “middle of nowhere,” but many will look at it that way) to show me that the right mindset, not some brochure-ish destination, is what lets my head breathe and go on vacation.
Think I’ll go sit and stare at turbines for awhile….
Related posts:
- Waikiki Beach at sunset, because your head needs this
- A Dream Vacation Revisited
- Plunging head first into Petra and Jordan
- The Straight Story: Hilton Head Island
August 9th, 2010 at 3:17 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Sheila Scarborough, Shelly S Terrell and Shelly S Terrell, chris fancher. chris fancher said: rt @ShellTerrell Vacation is a state of mind! http://tinyurl.com/35zlyzo via @cfanch [via my lovely wife @sheilas] [...]
August 12th, 2010 at 8:37 am
You’re mostly right about that, since almost half of the things we do or plan are altered by the way we think about them. Having a certain set of mind about our job, vacation or even the simplest things in life is very important. Said otherwise – if you consider yourself miserable, you’ll end up being miserable some day.
I like your post, even though it’s a sudden epiphany you’ve felt for yourself and decided to share with us
August 13th, 2010 at 8:03 am
Thanks for the feedback, Ivo!
August 30th, 2010 at 11:11 am
I agree, a vacation is a state of mind. Different people feel relaxed in different circumstances. Some love shopping while others lay on a beach. I guess whatever brings your mind to that zen state is what you need to find, and then find the location that makes it the easiest for your mind to get there.
October 26th, 2010 at 1:27 am
[...] Scarborough presents: Your vacation is in your head posted at Perceptive Travel Blog, saying, “On a nighttime drive out in the middle of nowhere [...]