Take a vacation, part 2
End of July edition
Greetings friends!
How are you doing? Who has a fun long weekend or trip planned soon? I do! This is being published the day after I returned from a camping/surfing trip with an organization called Bitches and Barrels. I joined one of their trips last year and surfed a few times before that trip. I didn’t want to go into this one with too many goals for myself so they were to have fun and improve my stand-up/pop-up technique (mission accomplished!). It’s fun to be a beginner, to enjoy learning new things, and to not worry about being better. Do you feel the same way about learning things as an adult or does it stress you out to be a beginner?
It’s link time
I liked the way this advice columnist handled the drunk airplane seatmate situation. She makes good points.
A cute look at the travel bucket list. My favourite quote from it is below.
Perhaps bucket lists are most useful for this: They make clear what is important to the traveler. After all, when we are in relatively good health, it is often hard to summon up the urgency to do something until is too late to do it.
I spent a week in Copenhagen 5 years ago and recently finished watching The Bear, which had an entire episode in the city. It reminded me how much I loved the city and would like to go back. I don’t need to go to a lot of big cities anymore but Copenhagen is unique, compact, and different and I love it. The NYT Travel has a recent article about 36 hours in Copenhagen and I loved it.
If you are planning a summer vacation to Europe, some of these overtouristed destinations are capping daily visitors to preserve the destination for all tourism partners.
Have you been to Los Angeles? Did you like it? I may be biased because I have several friends there and I love LA. There is a lot to do that has nothing to do with the entertainment industry. But there’s that too if you want it. It will be the subject of a future visitor guide for paid subscribers. The recent subway expansion makes it easier to visit some key places without sitting in traffic on the 10, the 5, or the 101 forever.
The importance of vacation and disconnecting, part two
Getting back to my chat with Jennica about vacation, I asked her some questions about vacation and travel and how the two relate. She said that one of the things she hears from others most often when they learn about her occupational recovery is “I can’t take a vacation, I don’t have money to travel.” Jennica’s goal is to have us all rethink those two words and their association with one another. They can be the same thing, but they are not the same thing.
She summarizes by saying the two concepts are separate. “You can vacation and travel, like going to Cancun. You can vacation and not travel, you can do a typical staycation in your home and not travel, and then you can travel and not take a vacation, like a working holiday.” She states that too many people think of them as the same.
Jennica’s book and research focus on separating the two, actual vacation is rest or occupational recovery. She
“You can travel and recover from work, but you can also recover from work by reading a book, by going for a walk, by just detaching from work or detaching from stress.”
Jennica comments that the biggest misconception is that we need to travel on a vacation or to recover and rest from work. But, the critical aspect of recovery is taking time away from work. She believes that recovery from work will continue to be key because remote work and working from home are becoming a lot more common and it is so much easier to reach workers outside of working hours.
An example that I gleaned from Jennica’s social media account is her comparison to collegiate and professional athletes - they take time off. They work hard and have necessary rest days and extended time off, especially after significant events and competitions. Humans need rest from physical and mental activity, thus the need for occupational recovery.
I asked Jennica if she saw vacation as more of a mindfulness activity (recovery, rest, self-care) and then asked her what we should aim to achieve from our vacation. How should we feel afterward? What types of activities should we plan for ourselves whether staying home or travelling near or far. Jennica stated that it depends upon one’s personality and lifestyle and that the vacation needs to align with a person’s values, interests, and stress level. She specifically mentioned that research shows that nature-based vacations have been better for occupational recovery but if one does not prefer a nature-based vacation (which can mean MANY things) then it will not suit them to pursue that type of vacation.
From her research on vacation and its effects, Jennica points to three things as the key factors in designing a restful vacation that is occupational therapy.
Relax - the more relaxing it is FOR YOU, the more beneficial it is for you
Detaching from work - minimize work contact, don’t check in at all if you can manage that.
Controlling - making sure you’re doing things, or some things, that YOU want to do.
Jennica’s upcoming book (sign up for notifications at that link) and her research focuses on helping people hone in on how to maximize their vacation time for recovery and their values. I’ve linked her website and some of her tools within this edition.
How do you see vacation? What do you need to get from your vacations or your occupational recovery? I would love to hear from you, and I’ll be sending out a short survey this week about how this community views recovery, rest, and travel. I’ll leave it open and report back on the stats in September. :)
Thanks for subscribing, reading, and clicking.
Sonya