Vacation

I just got back from a week long vacation with my wife’s family. They are amazing people and have welcomed me into their lives as if I was always a part of the family. More about family in a future post. We went to Fripp Island SC. This is probably one of the best places to be in the whole world. It’s a small private island and nature preserve. It’s beautiful and amazing.

This is most peoples vacation reality: save up some money (or use a credit card), load up the car with beach chairs, towels, food and drink and head off to some beach somewhere, spend 1 day out of your week driving, unpacking, setting up and trying to relax at the end of that day from a stressful day of travel and set up. Then you spend the week having fun, drinking too much, trying to cram a summers worth of fun into a week. All the while knowing in the back of your mind that you have only have 4 days left, then 3, then 2 and then you’re eating all the leftovers, gathering dirty laundry, getting packed up so you can check out early in the morning. By the time you really start to relax, if you ever do, it’s time to get ready to go home and back to work, so you can work the next 51 weeks and do it all over again. Bullshit. This sucks. The vacation doesn’t suck, the whole process sucks. I’m not sure how we as a society have decided that this is okay. I don’t. You shouldn’t either. No one should. Vacation should last longer and be more relaxing. It doesn’t even have to be about vacation, but we all need time to relax and reflect, to really get to know our spouses and kids and parents and siblings.

What if you only get 1 week of vacation? That’s a problem, I get it. There are ways to make changes if what you want is more free time. Maybe a different career is needed. Maybe a different company in the same career is needed. Maybe you can work from home some, more, or always. It’s a fact that most people can be more productive working from home. If you have young kids you can’t escape at home, this might not be the case. Discipline is what it takes to be productive from home. Not everyone has it. I don’t always. I used to work for a large mortgage company. I was paid well (overpaid if I’m being honest). I thought I worked hard, put in long hours and could never take days off. I had 3 or maybe more weeks of vacation time, but it was a joke. I was a commissioned salesperson. If I took 2 weeks off and didn’t work then the next month or 2 worth of paychecks would be affected, so I never took vacation. Looking back on those days I could have “done it all different”. I was at the office too many hours. I had a phone stuck to ear all the time. I was available 24 hours a day to my customers. Some of this made me successful. Most of it made me feel like I was doing what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to be a slave to the job, chasing the 15 or 20 or 30k commission checks. And so I did. I made big commission checks and subsequently spent them as fast as they came in, for there was always another one coming next month. I bought nice stuff, nice clothes, I had big bar tabs, I gave away a lot in a divorce, I wasted it. Even when I had free time or went out with friends, I stopped to take calls nonstop. Luckily this was just as blackberry’s were becoming a thing and I didn’t have access to my email all the time or I would have never taken my eyes off my phone. This was both the best job and worst job of my working life. I made more money than I should have been able to make, but I missed a lot. I can remember being at my daughters softball games and sitting on the bleachers discussing a deal with a customer, walking away and missing 20 minutes of the practice or game because that deal couldn’t wait. But it could have. And it should have. I could have ignored that call. Or answered and said “i’m at my daughters game, call you in an hour”, but I didn’t. I chose to never miss a deal, to make as much money as possible. Why? (I sit here pondering this). I don’t have a good reason. Some is because I’m competitive, I wanted my name at the top of the list. Some is greed, I wanted to see a stupid amount being direct deposited into my account. Some was pride, I didn’t grow up with much, I had no degree, so to know I made more than the average lawyer or doctor was thrilling, made me feel accomplished.

Back to how this ties in to vacation. I look back now and know I could done it all different. I could have still made way more than the average person and walked out the door at 5 or 6 and returned calls in the morning. Sure I would have lost some deals, but I would have enjoyed my off work time more. I could have prioritized my time more. Just as I wasted checks, I wasted my day at the office. I wasn’t the first one in. I’d check in and then take a ride to Starbucks. I’d take a long lunch and have beers with the guys. I’d sit outside with the smokers taking smoke breaks (even though I didn’t smoke). If I’m being honest and looking back, I didn’t actually work that many hours. Some days I did, most days not so much. I was just there, feeling like I was working, showing my managers I was putting in the time. If I was truly focused I could have done everything in a few hours a day. I could have worked remote. I would have gotten more done in less time. I could have trained my customers on what to expect from me and how quickly. I wish I had read then what turned out to be my favorite book and has changed my life forever, The 4 hour work week by Tim Ferriss. One big part of that book teaches you how to accomplish working remote, even if your company doesn’t currently allow it. If I could have setup remote work I could have done it from anywhere. I could have lived at the beach, taking calls and emails from a beach chair looking at the ocean. I could have scheduled my day so I could be active, volunteer, spend more time with my daughter, meditate or whatever.

Vacation is supposed to be relaxing, but for many I don’t think it truly is. We go through life and do what we are supposed to do, to think how we are supposed to think because that’s how everyone else thinks. It’s normal to get 1 week a year to take off, because that’s what we imagine or know everyone else to be doing. Not me. I’m not falling into this trap. And you don’t have to either. Find a way to take more time for yourself. Maybe you have to change jobs, okay. Would that be the worst thing ever? If you made a little less but had more free time, would it be worth it? If you could get the job that you do in 40 or 50 hours done in 15 or 20 by working from home, would it be worth it, even if you made a little less? I think so.

I have many things I want to write about, but these 2 things make sense to mention now briefly on this topic. I don’t believe in an afterlife, this is what we have. Hopefully 70-90 years on this earth, but could be way less, why waste it all working and planning for the future? That future may never come, enjoy life NOW.

If you ask an older person what they regret, I bet most will tell you they regret not taking the time they had and enjoying life and their families. If you think about your own life and where you see yourself at the end of it, ask what you think you will regret. The only way to not regret those things is to make those changes now so they aren’t regrets later in life. For me up until recently my biggest regret has been working too much, missing important parts of life because I was chasing “stuff”. Slow down, relax, don’t work so much, take more vacations or at least time for yourself and family.

We can all do it if we’re willing to stop thinking like everyone else, giving in that this is just how it’s all supposed to work. I don’t believe it is. Make the changes you must to enjoy life now. Don’t fall for the promise or idea of golden years and getting to do what you want in retirement, that time may not come. Do life different than the rest starting now.