Dreading Vacation

Do you dread what everyone else wants?

Have you dreaded what you want yourself?

You love your babies, but you can’t wait for them to outgrow diapers. Most people look forward to birthdays, anniversaries, and Christmas. But you would rather skip special events altogether.

Dreading a vacation must mean something for medicine and politics, but the creative stretch would beggar both ends of the connection.

I blame Dr. Matt Poyner. He quit work and unschooled his children for a year. Make sure you read his popular post: How to Leave Medicine and Travel the World.

My wife loved Matt’s post. But it damaged her ability to think clearly and cracked my resolve to say no.

So, in two weeks our whole family heads to Europe for almost two months. I put most of the blame on Poyner and his pernicious ideas. Two months is not a courageous, sell-the-house and travel for a year commitment. But it is big, for us.

Generalized Vacation Anxiety Disorder

By how many years will this delay my retirement?

Do I have to ship my backpack?

What should I say at customs?

Do phone chargers work?

Where will we sleep?

What will we eat?

Can four full-grown Gen-Zs jam into a car without fighting?

Even though I get six weeks’ vacation and one week CME, I never take them. I hate the pain of catching up after being away. This time, I have two great docs covering my clinic.

But what if they have questions?

Will my colleagues grumble?

I am already dreading the complaints: “I came in to see you, but you weren’t here.”

I feel like a scoundrel, a poser.

A thousand other details press in: What about the house, property, mail, newspaper, and cellphone? And what about the bird feeder? I cope by ignoring it all and dreading the thought.

As deadlines expire on decisions I avoided, I start to relax. There are fewer details I can control, even if I wanted to.

I feel a strange peace: something like the calm I felt when my appendix ruptured, and I was forced to take two unplanned weeks off in hospital with a bowel obstruction. There is no peace like knowing there is nothing you can do but lie there and listen to low-intermittent nasogastric suction.

I envision endless hours to do exactly what I want: write a few papers, finish a book, start another, publish at least three blog posts per week, and to finally read the collected works of Karl Marx.

Nonsense.

If the past indicates my future, I will probably write nothing and not even open Marx. Besides, who cares what Karl said? Never mind the narcissism of spending so much time on myself; I might as well go by myself.

Vacation vs. Leisure

Some docs take time off all the time. We work like maniacs and then escape South to over-indulge and recover on the beach. It is time away, but not time off. We continue our crowded, un-present life on a beach or cruise ship.

I found an old copy of Joseph Pieper’s Leisure: The Basis of Culture at a garage sale, years ago. He said that the Greek word for leisure is schole from which we get the Latin scola, or school in English.

I have probably twisted schole into an excuse to hide out with my suitcase full of books and avoid visiting. But schole stuck with me. Do we understand leisure? How is it different from vacation or entertainment?

Very few of us take time off from ourselves. We are too scared or chained to commitments to risk uncomfortable change. Whether for a weekend or a few weeks, we go on vacation and our self comes with us.

This is a long-winded way of asking for advice. Not just for me, but for everyone who reads this. I never travel more than a few days. Is two months away considered vacation, travelling, or just living abroad? What will guarantee regret? What do you wish you had done?

As I march through middle age, I feel that I am getting stupider. I seem more aware of how little I know and how much I already forget. Each answered question presents three I had not considered that are even more delicious than the first.  Where can I find time to think? I must retire soon to start work on them. Maybe a dreaded vacation is a great place to start.

Photo credit: Economist.com Mixing Business and Leisure

23 thoughts on “Dreading Vacation”

  1. Here’s some great advice shared on FaceBook by someone who travels with a 4-month old and 3-year old:

    “Travelling with 1 checked bag. Buying things as we need them. And we usually book last minute and pay the premium or use hotel/airline points.
    Edited for some tips:
    1. Airport park so you can leave your clothes inside and arrive red eye can shoot to work.
    2. Always prepay for seats.
    3. Always carry an ipad.
    4. Always have a rental car.
    5. Always Valet the car.
    6. Always get help with luggage- leave that part to others who are glad to help.
    7. Tip well.
    8. Stop at a local store when you land. Buy a cooler, milk, coffee, cereal, bananas etc for an emergency.
    9. Order take out an hour before you plan to eat.
    10. Take a baby carrier.
    11. Plan for atleast 1 day for each hour of flying time. So 4 hour flight atleast 4 days, 10 hour flight atleast 10.
    11. Order breakfast for room service.
    12. Pack 3-4 days of clothes and buy or laundry.
    13. Choose repeat destinations once in a while.
    14. Always take the kids with you. Otherwise you would just spend the vacation thinking what they are doing.
    15. Have a heathy stash of airline/hotel points.
    Some will say that this is going to make a trip expensive but at the end of the day, its probably $200 or so and a lot of peace of mind.”

  2. Shawn there is so much to unpack here. Dread, guilt, denial, avoidance, obligation. I’m getting chest pain just thinking about it.

    The fact that I’m not immediately responding with a collection of responses like dreams, hope, relax, fulfilled, break, refresh, life-is-short, enjoy, beauty, connect…. well, I could go on. My first impulse/response says something, doesn’t it?

    Matt Poyner is evil. An evil evil virus who has infected all of us 😉

    Going to muse and post more later…..

    1. Very funny, and thoughtful, comments, MD. Yes, sorry. It was a bit of a brain dump of things energizing the dread.

      BTW, I did give Matt P warning — He said he liked the blame/credit offered. 🙂

      Great to hear from you!

    2. Aw shucks, Matt and Shawn – I didn’t realize my little life experiment had such an impact on you. The comparison to an evil virus is strangely gratifying. As far as I know, contact with me and my ideas does not lead to burning vesicular rashes, encephalitis or bleeding from your eyeballs, but the relative risk of spending less time doing medicine and more pursuing bucket-list items may be high. Sorry.

      1. Well said, Matt.

        Yes, relative risk indeed. I think you might be surprised at how far the ripples of your adventure have been felt. Thanks again for sharing them!

        Very glad to see that Matt D knows you well enough to offer such a perfect, twisted compliment. 🙂

  3. Have a good time Shawn, agree with the luggage idea. Carry only the stuff you can’t get locally. Always carry-on your meds and CPAP if needed. Carry lots of small bills in local currency for tipping. Avoid time share presentations like they were repeats of MCCQE! Drink lots of water, the good stuff. Take your Dukoral its worth it. Enjoy yourself. Get cheap massages when available.

    1. Ernest!

      This is great advice. Despite nearly 50 comments on the FB page, your comments are almost all fresh and original. Brilliant.

      Thanks so much for reading and posting!

      Cheers

    1. Brilliant title for the HBR article, John(y). Thanks for sharing it! Looking forward to reading…

      Big smile on taking Karl with me. Yes, I tend to agree. 😉 And I have a notebook also.

      Thanks again for reading and posting a comment! Great to hear from you.

      Cheers

  5. No dread of vacations in themselves.

    Worrying about practice overheads that accumulated relentlessly whether on was working or not was omni present “ in the old days” ….one could be lying on a beach wherever, but one was ever conscious of the accumulating overheads and that one’s patients might drift away unless treated like hand fed canaries.

    Coverage of ones practice had to be negotiated with others, sometimes one was successful, sometimes not…in which case one would send ones family away for vacation whilst one remained in the trenches….there was no artificial glut of patients in those days and one maintained ones practice via the 3 A’s…Ability, Amiability and Availability….today, put up ones shingle ( Primary Care Reform with stop that) and the patients pour in.

    My vacations were sweet, short and expensive in those days.

    After 45 years of solo , group and solo practice I closed it ( at great expense) and joined a setting where one paid a %age of one’s income….if I don’t work there is no practice income but no ongoing overhead costs either….that overhead and practice responsibility cloud happily lifted.

    After 4+ years in my new setting , refreshed by working with much younger and very capable colleagues , facing imminent retirement ( I though that Primary Care Reform , my exit moment, would have been in place by now) ….vacations are a joy in particular when visiting grandchildren , the old haunts of ones childhood and to historical sites of ones interests ( Nexus is a great convenience) .

    My younger colleagues take much longer vacations than I did at their age ( but they don’t seem to be raising families and are presumably paying off student debts ) .

    Still possessing a flip phone, I noted last summer the benefits of smart phones…maps to find a touted restaurant…an alert if the train has been switched to another platform ( people mysteriously moved en mass staring at their phones) …also language apps….

    1. Inspirational! An explorer of life and mind. Hope you will be able to land back in Mt Albert.

    2. Andris

      You always write such interesting comments. Fascinating to hear about practice 45 years ago. I have heard similar things from others. Solo practice probably has carried its own challenges regardless of when or where it has been done.

      Your current group sounds interesting. I find that those kinds of arrangements often reward those who aim to avoid being the top biller in the group. It encourages time off. That is attractive for those who want time off, for sure.

      Be careful with the smart phone! I have been steadily deleting apps over the last few months. It forces me to ration my social media time to a desktop.

      Thanks again for reading and sharing your thoughts! I know I didn’t respond to them all, but please know that I enjoyed them.

      Cheers

  6. Well done Shawn. A few years ago, I did something similar with my husband and two sons. I knew that I was burning out. I went to visit extended family in Europe and introduced my boys to their ‘Mother’s People’. Time well spent. I took 6 weeks. Ultimately I ended up closing my practice last fall and scaling my work differently. Good thing as my husband just had a serious health crisis. Life is too short. We need to remember’Carpe Diem’. We only do this journey once.

    1. Wow, sure hope you and your husband are managing well and this is just a short crisis.

      I love hearing that people say 6 weeks made a difference. I always worry that the investment will be forgotten with all the other laundry of life. And I love hearing about people who took children along.

      Was there a long gap between your trip and scaling back your practice? No need to reply if you’d rather not…just wondering.

      Thanks so much for taking time to read and share! Readers love the comments best.

      Hoping for good news for you husband soon,

      Shawn

      1. There was about 4 years in between. Which was 3 years too many. But that’s water under the bridge and I choose to look to today and tomorrow. To do otherwise would be mind numbing. You will not regret the time spent with family.

        1. Wise and very interesting. Thank you, again. I am convinced that we can learn from others; that’s why I love reading these comments and reading books.

          Really appreciate you taking time to respond!

          s

  7. We didn’t really enjoy the one week escapes to the usual resorts. Wasn’t long enough to unwind and truly escape from the things we needed a break from. It was also too long away from our pets and comforts of home. Our compromise was to get a nice motorhome. We now take 2-3 week long trips with 2 kids, 2 dogs, and a guinea pig. We stay at really nice resorts and get a lot of excursions in. The cost to use it for nice trips is pretty good but it was a huge upfront cost. That has psychologically helped me take more vacation ‘cause I already paid for it and dammit I am going to get my moneys worth out of it! I would be pretty hard to drive it to Europe though.
    -LD

    1. Hey, thanks for this, LD!

      I have often wondered about motorhomes. Pets are a pain for going anywhere other than the cottage. Even then, they add a wrinkle. I never thought about being able to bring the dogs on a motorhome…hmmm. Have to think about that one. I imagine you can find decent used motorhomes for a good price, no?

      Thanks again. You’ve given me something to think about for sure!

      Cheers

      1. Hey Shawn,

        Would definitely go used. They depreciate super fast. Good idea to rent one to get a feel for it (although rental often doesn’t allow pets). There is a big step up in quality and driving comfort with a diesel pusher vs the less expensive gas ones. Lifespan on a diesel is 15-20 years and most of the depreciation is in the first 5 years. We are on our second. Somewhere around 5-10 years old is the sweet spot when someone else has worked out the bugs and eaten the big depreciation. We get ours from a local dealer who gives a 28 day warranty on used which we have also found to be important – you discover all the things to fix on the first trip usually.
        -LD

        1. Excellent. Thanks so much for this. I love diesel and was hoping you might say this. Good advice on the rental also.

          Sure appreciate you taking time to respond!

          Cheers

Comments are closed.