A friend of mine, and a contributor on this site, is a teacher. He’s on summer vacation now and recently took a one man writing retreat. He left town and stayed at a place with no phone and no TV. I told him I was jealous since lately I’ve seen my writing get a little deprioritized–short sessions or no sessions at all some days.
But then I got thinking. I have five days of vacation. I have no money to go any great distance or do anything particularly amazing for vacation. Normally that would be depressing and I would just keep working like a drone and bitching about how I didn’t have any money to do anything with the days. Alternatively I might just hoard the days and dribble them out for a three day weekend here and there.
Instead I’m taking a writer’s retreat of my own. I’m just taking all five days and using it to finish the first draft of my novel. I figure I’m about 98 percent done. This work has been much more tortoise than hare but now I’m going for a sprint across that finish line. I’ll lay in a good supply of coffee, tobacco, and beer and put the coup de grace on this bad boy. It may not sound like much but I’m excited.
About Eric Bahle
Good for you! I think a lot of us are going through the same right now. A writing “staycation” sounds like a dream right now. Go come up with something great and block all of us out while you do!
You mentioned the option that makes the most sense–use the five vacation days for a three-day weekend here and there. Those will get you a lot more stress relief than taking all five days at once. It sounds like maybe you have one week of vacation per year. It would be better if you had two. Then you could take a long vacation in addition to some three-day weekends. But if you can only have one of the two, I would argue that the rational choice is to use your vacation days for three-day weekends.