A couple weeks ago was school vacation and I took a day off. I have female colleagues with small children who struggle to find sitters for each day of vacation so they won't have to take time off although they have plenty of vacation time to use (some goes unused each year) and certainly the pressing need for a small break. I have taken some days off during every school vacation of the last fifteen years since my boys have been in school....and I've loved it. I no longer need to, but I want to.
It's been good for the boys....it's been good for me. Generally, school vacations come just at the time when I'm so in need and due for a little time off myself -- perfectly scheduled throughout the year. Why not? I do something similar by taking one vacation day each Tuesday through the summers. It provides change and breaks up the ho-hum flow of our everyday routine. My being home to make lunches, cookies, a good dinner, allow friends in, or give rides to the movies or the Mall are appreciated by my family. They don't have to do same-old, same-old every day. We can do something fun together or we can do nothing - that's what vacation is supposed to be.
On my day off, instead of jumping up to unload the dishwasher, put in a load of laundry, pull on the running sneakers and pound the pavement, I grabbed my Oprah Magazine and got back into bed....by myself. Can't remember the last morning I stayed in bed alone. It was fabulous! It was quiet and peaceful and big! (I mean the bed was big when I was in it by myself, my husband long gone to work.) My son was still asleep; I was cozy and relaxed and doing something different than my daily work routine.
Ideas began to come to me in almost everything I read in the magazine. Truly, I got the inspiration for about 20 blog ideas. I've been a little dry on ideas lately but that morning, they were just free flowing almost like a waterfall, gushing out of me actually, and giving me such pleasure in having them and thinking more about them. I laughed out loud. It is only when we pause, when we change our routine and do nothing, that everything else comes into focus. Stopping allows whatever is deep inside us to stir. Keeping perpetually busy, surrounded by conversation and noise, squelches our ability to hear our inner voice.
That morning, I was a calmer, saner, more enlightened person than when I went to bed the night before. That feeling lingered and everything in my life, even when I went back to work, benefitted from it. A vacation day, quiet time alone.....what a beautiful concept!
Photo: Stroudwater
