Hey, Friends!

I’ve been quiet for the past few weeks because I took a much needed vacation back home to Virginia to see my family. But I’m back now…

The three of us - my husband Ryan, my son Brett and I - spent a whopping 10 days in coastal Virginia where I grew up. Aside from our wedding way back in 2012, this was the longest vacation we had ever taken. It was just what we needed. 

Some really cool things happened. I have pictures to prove it. ;)

• All the ladies in my family celebrated my cousin at her baby shower. The rejuvenating power of strong women spending time together bonding is amazing.

• Ryan and I took a quick overnight trip up the Eastern Shore to Rehoboth and Milton, Delaware to check out the Dogfish Head Brewery and the boardwalk. My husband’s an avid homebrewer so we had to check an item off his bucket list.

• We took Brett to the beach any time we could get away.

• AND! We saw a real live starfish on the shore! How awesome is that! 

Basically, I wore the boys out.

Know what else made it this trip awesome?

Disconnecting from work and being fully present with my family.

So how did I manage to do it for ten whole days and not feel guilty about it? A few easy things that you can do on your next trip too!

Disconnect From Reality. Reconnect with Your Soul.

Today I’m giving you the highlights of how I did just that. I could tell that everyone in my house was on the brink of crashing after the past year and a half we’ve all had. Personally, I was overloaded, wiped out, and barely treading water. It was time to break away. I needed to be home. Yes, I still call Virginia home after more than a decade away.

I was determined to completely block out work during the trip. Some of the tactics outlined below I did intentionally, others happened by accident. It all worked out perfectly in the end.

Leave Things Unfinished. 

I’m usually really good at creating a “Before I Leave” to-do list at work and checking everything off before I walk out the door.

Unfortunately, Mercury must have been in retrograde on my last day because everything that could have popped-up unexpectedly did just that.

On top of that an upgrade to my work laptop didn’t launch correctly the night before and my IT department said I needed to launch the upgrade manually.

Sure, no problem. Oh by the way, that upgrade was going to take 30 minutes and I was going to lose access to my computer during that time. Umm. Great. 

At 4:30pm on a Thursday I was totally freaking out. I had to leave asap to get my son to swim lessons. I hadn’t finished my to-do list and I had just started that dang manual upgrade. I didn’t have 30 minutes to wait around for it to complete so that I could take my laptop home in order to finish working later that night. 

Honestly, I just had to let the to-do list go unfinished. Yes, that meant that approvals didn’t happen. The draft copy didn’t get to the graphic designer. That purchase order didn’t get closed out before the end of the fiscal year. Speaking of approvals, I also forgot to approve my timecard before I left. (Don’t worry. It got taken care of.) Guess what? The world did not come to an end.

Literally Disconnect. Leave the work laptop at work. 

Because I had to leave in a hurry and because my laptop was in the middle of an upgrade process I had to intentionally leave my laptop at work. So glad I did. Any other time I would have brought it along in case I needed to finish up work at home before leaving. Or, get this, I would often bring it with me on my trip on the off chance I needed to handle a work “emergency” and access my work’s remote network to send someone a file. pfft! Who does that?

This time, if someone needed something from me while I was out they were just going to have to wait a week.  Guess what? Everyone was perfectly fine with that.

I’m the only staff for the arts division at my work. Meaning that I don’t typically have staff support to back me up when I'm gone. If I’m gone, the work doesn’t get done. Period. If you’re also a one-person shop you experience this too. You (we) have to accept that not all of the work is going to get done. If that to-do list doesn’t get finished it doesn’t trigger the apocalypse. The world does not end.

Or does it?

It doesn’t. I just wanted to change up the mood and create a little drama.

Set Firm Expectations and Boundaries in “Out of Office” Voicemail Greetings. 

You don’t have to tell people that you are on vacation on voicemail greetings. I used to change my voicemail greeting when I was going to be out for an extended period of time. But this time I simply forgot. (Remember that to-do list that didn’t get finished?) I decided pretty quickly that I was perfectly OK with not changing my voicemail greeting.

I get it. Changing the voicemail greeting to say that we’re on vacation and that we’ll return your call as soon as blah, blah, blah, is a professional courtesy. Honestly, as long as your general voicemail greeting says something like “I’ll return your call when I am able to do so.”, there’s really no reason to change your message for vacations. People don’t need to know why you're out of the office. The only person who really needs to know where you are is your boss.

You also don’t owe anyone a response within 24 hours. Again, I know that doing so is a professional courtesy. But a courtesy is not an obligation. You said that you’d get back to them when it was convenient for you. Create your boundaries and set expectations. Protect that personal time! 

Stop agreeing to periodically check emails in the “Out of Office” email message. 

Friends, can we all agree to stop doing this. Please? 

Just because someone emails you during your paid time off does not mean they are owed an immediate response from you. No one really expects you to respond anyways.

For me, I’ve stopped including in the message that I would be checking emails periodically for vacation and personal time. Again, It’s about setting clear boundaries and expectations of your time. I am not going to be available to answer questions on my personal time unless it's truly an urgent emergency that cannot wait. (#reclaimingmytime)

Take it from Auntie Maxine.

Limit the time spent checking emails. 

I tried real hard to disconnect 100% from work while I was in Virginia. But quitting emails was a tad harder than I thought. I was still checking my emails. I just didn’t let anyone know about it.

My work emails are forwarded to my personal cell phone. It used to be that I would constantly check my email throughout the day no matter what I was doing. If I thought an email needed a response, I’d respond. Why did I feel the need to reply? Well, when I was stating in my out of office message that I’d be checking emails periodically I felt obligated to respond. Even in the middle of dinner.  

Nope. I’m done with that. No more. 

This time I monitored my emails but didn’t dedicate any time to responding. I probably spent about 5 minutes a day checking email ONLY because the action of clicking on my phone’s email icon had become so subconscious over the years that half the time I didn’t even recognize I was doing it! That was the wakeup call I needed! 

I’ll say that again. Over the years, every single time I picked up my phone - no matter what I was doing - the first thing I’d do was click my email app icon. The simple act of checking my work email on my phone had become such an ingrained habit that I was doing it subconsciously. The habit had become automatic. It was my dopamine hit. Am I missing something? What does this person need now? Oh great… this can’t be good. It took me a few days into my trip to realize what was happening and to start retraining my brain not to click my email icon every time I picked up my phone. 

I made a strategy. I gave myself only five minutes a day to check emails. During that time I skimmed the list for priority senders and important subject lines. I immediately deleted any junk or unimportant emails just to get them out of the way. Then I opened emails from priority coworkers like my boss or executive assistants to see if any immediate response or action was needed. Guess what? Zero emails needed an immediate response from me while I was out. None.  

All other emails waited until I got back to the office. I also did not send any unnecessary responses like “Got it!” or “Thanks for sending this!”. I was not going to give my energy to this action. Everyone who sent me an email got my auto response and that’s all they needed to see from me.  

Take Time For Yourself and Your Family

It was so refreshing to dedicate so little thought or energy to my job while I was on vacation. It really was good for my soul. This meant that I was able to dedicate 100% of my time to my family and to simply having fun.

Friends. It’s all hard. Working in the arts is hard. Working in the nonprofit sector is hard. Life is hard. That’s why it’s so important to give our minds and bodies respite by disconnecting from it all for a while.

The work goes on without us. So you can leave things unfinished. You can make yourself unavailable. You can get away and recharge. Find a way to disconnect even if just for an extended weekend in a hotel room down the street. I promise you that it will help rebuild your mental, emotional and physical strength so that you can tackle all that “hard”. 

What’s missing?

Let’s get a list going. How do you disconnect from work when you take a vacation. Send me an DM on Instagram and let me know.