This year I’ve had the luxury of taking a summer holiday. I was going to write ‘for the first time since school’ but actually, my last summer holiday was the summer of 2020 when I finished uni, before starting my first job in November of that year. So when you put it like that, it hasn’t actually been that long since my last one… just 6 years.
When you consider that as children we’re trained to expect 2 months off every summer though, it is quite a while to go without a proper break actually.
After starting my 12 month sabbatical in April earlier this year, I was pretty non-stop and quickly realised I’m incapable of resting. It’s something I quite like about myself really as it means I’m always busying myself with a new project or side quest, which keep things exciting. This summer I’ve called them my ‘hyper-fixations’, and they seem to change weekly, sometimes daily. However, it does get pretty exhausting to always be on the go. Last week, after realising I’d barely stopped since I finished work, I made myself just stop for a week to recover.
It made me grumpy and unmotivated, and I felt like I was wasting time by not achieving anything, I felt lazy and like I lacked purpose.
This week, I feel refreshed and ready to go again. It had felt like I had been put on a time out last week, like I was being punished; all I wanted to do was to work on my hobbies and go on adventures, but I didn’t allow myself to. Now I’m excited that I get to work on them again and have a newfound appreciation for them, and I think I needed that week off in order to regain the energy to keep going.
It made me reflect on the idea of summer holidays, and how everybody should be allowed one each year in their adult life – or even every two years. I think we need that time to just stop, to take a breath and reflect on all that we’ve endured and achieved this year, to grant ourselves the permission to rest, to be tired without feeling guilty and stop forcing ourselves onwards for the sake of productivity. When you are allowed that time to rest, you can get excited again, you can find new motivations and really think about what you want to do next. Whether that’s creating new goals for next year, thinking about changes you would like to make to your life in order to be happier, or even just what fun new thing you would like to hyper-fixate on this week, everyone should get that chance to stop and think.
How often do we get that as adults?
It’s so important to be able to take stock and check in on yourself, to ask yourself if you’re heading in the right direction and if there are areas in your life that could be improved. I think the time we’re living in is so geared towards productivity that we never actually appreciate all that we’ve achieved and produced. We just move onto the next thing and never give ourselves recognition and credit for all our hard work. Then one day you look up and realise 5 years have passed, and what do you have to show for it? When you collect all those little recognitions, quite a lot actually.
We need to give ourselves more grace and more credit. We’re doing a great job, and we’re allowed to recognise that. We’re allowed to rest and recover from all that we’ve done. We’ve earned a summer holiday!
catdidthis 
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