Who decided workers should get a week or two off a year? That just doesn’t do it. You need a week or two just to unwind, no?
I got back this past weekend from a six-day trip to one of the Finger Lakes called Skaneateles Lake and do you know when I started to really relax? The day before our drive home.
At least I did have a day. I was so relaxed that even the spiders that swarmed around the lake house we stayed in didn’t bother me. My husband and I were sitting at the side of the lake, fishing polls in hand, and a big spider was dancing on the top of my head. My husband said, “there’s a spider on your head.” I calmly replied, “can you take it off?”
Trust me, if I weren’t relaxed I would have jumped out of my skin and into the lake without even thinking.
Anyway, besides not letting creepy-crawlies bug me, I needed more time to enjoy the relaxation. It was nice. I was fishing damn it. 
OK, I didn’t catch anything but lake grass, but I was unwinding. I’d get up early every morning before anyone was up and head down to the lake with my coffee in hand. I never really got the secure-the-worm-on-hook thing and kept flinging the little Canadian slimy guys into the water when I’d cast, but it was serene…no email, no phones, no nothing.
When I got back to the office on Monday my desk looked like a little prison. And it took me a few days to get back into the swing of things. I even put out calls on LinkedIn and Twitter for advice on how to get back into the daily grind.
On Twitter I asked: any tips for getting back into the grind/after a week away to unwind?
This reply from @kellydavis226 I hear you - it’s my first day back from a week off too 
Nice to see others were suffering too, but I got more concrete advice on LinkedIn.
From Alan Brymer: Start planning your next vacation. Then going back to work won’t seem like such a downer, and you’ll have something to work for again.
And from Tracey Segarra: Start working on a new project that truly interests and excites you. Starting something fresh and new always helps revive me after a break.
I actually have plans to start a new project, and that has really been motivating me.
After reading some of the advice I remembered I wrote a column a while back about the post-vacation blues and went back to read it. It had some good insights on the phenomenon if I do say so myself.
The affliction of post-vacation blues may not have made it into psychology books, but it is something many workers say they’re struggling with lately.
“There’s a lot of negativity out there right now,” says Dr. Robert Puff, a clinical psychologist and the author of “Anger Work: How To Express Your Anger and Still Be Kind.”
“You have people already grumbling at work when they keep reading and hearing about people losing their jobs, unemployment being up,” he says. “So when people go on vacation, they say, ‘This is great.’”
You’re not kidding!
“A day off from work no longer means a vacation,” says Marjorie Savage, absence management director with financial services company The Hartford. “Many workers are spending their days off doing stressful things, such as chores or caring for family. Trouble is, we all need downtime to recharge our bodies and our minds.”
A study by The Hartford found that even when workers do get days off, only 42 percent use those days to go on a vacation, and only 9 percent said they did something enjoyable during their days away from work.
For workers who do take a real vacation, it may be hard to leave it behind.
“I went on a three-day trip with four of my close friends. I was so sad when I got back to work that I considered moving to the location we were just visiting and trying to start a life there,” said Joie Tamkin, a manager for a baby products retailer. “I even enlisted one of my friends from the trip in the idea, and she was all for it.”
After a few days back in the reality of the daily grind, they thought better of their impetuous plans.
“I then decided to plan another vacation so I had something to look forward to,” she explains.
Exactly what Alan said.
So let’s all start planning the next vacation when we return from vacation.
We could go back to Spider-eateles Lake, as we came to call it. It was so quiet and the view from the deck was unreal.
Here’s a pastel my 9-year-old daughter did of the scene:
Now you all know why I have the vacation blues.
July 30th, 2009 at 9:39 am
Welcome back to the land of the living [dead]. Take heart that you did get to take a week off, and that you also get that work at home day once a week. I used to have both of those things. This year, at a new employer, I wasn’t even able to take a week to be with my family, so there was no chance of my volunteering to help at summer camp.
Perhaps prescribing more vacation time is something that might help reduce health care costs?
July 30th, 2009 at 9:57 am
I’m sooo sorry to hear that HikingStick.
You make a great point about saving on health costs. Time off to be with family can do wonders for a person’s health….most of the time
July 31st, 2009 at 12:26 am
Welcome back.
It is ironic you titled this 10 week vacation. My grabdfather was worked at US Steel for 40 years. One negotiated benefit forged in the 50’s and lasted through my 6 years there was that you had an ooption to accrue vacation time by taking one week a year. It was a standard 1week for one year, two weeks for year two, thre, and four, and three weeks year five through ten. If tyou opted for just one week a year your first five years, you were matched five more weeks. You had ten weeks to take anytime year five through ten, even consecutively if you chose which was the preferred method. This method worked to a point. Normally, you’d run out of money long before your vacation was finished.
One thing that I did retain from my grandfather’s vacation times, if you are a productive worker put into an environment that is all about relaxation, time goes very slow. Another aspect is you break from a routine you are comfortable with, things that you usually do not consider become prominent and suddenly you have a sense of being out of sync. Grandpap used this time to ‘test the distillery’ or was a ‘quality control specialist’ as he called it. My late grandma, bless her, would come vacation at our house for a spell while grandpap took up this new endeavor.I often wondered why Grandpap never had a car. I am happy he did not and happier to be a part of his 86 years on this earth.
The longest vacation I ever had lasted 17 days. All of our children were with us. They were age 7 through 19. We flew to Florida, rented a station wagon with a rumble seat from rent-a-wreck and treked North back to Pittsburgh. We played it by ear. This was our vacation. We did not buy anything for anybody except for us. Other than food, gas, some excellent rates we discovered on hotel rooms that never advertise like Herman’s Hide-A-Way,and a lot of luck, we spent on;y about half of what we anticipated. We had one bag of clothes for each person. It was a little more than half planned and it was the best time we ever had. The greatest adventure was in the Outer Banks on Corrolla. It is the only place in North America wher there are wild horses. THere are several public beaches and more private ones. For all of $5, we slept on the beach. THe owners were both wealthy, simple, sincere and had rules like no alcohol, put your trash in the dumpster, no profanity, no wandering chldren under 12 and use the rest rooms. The owners had a rock band called Hypnotic Clambake. They played for us at the clam bake they had that cost us $1.00 a person. It was for family’s only and it was wonderful. We had no idea it existed. In fact, we came upon Corrolla while headind to Virginia Beach and i thought yuo could get there , but you cannot. We ere in that vicinity for three days, the longest time we soent in one place.
I guess what I am saying is, and to me this theme will never become stale. The time you spend with your family is precious. THe time you give to the one’s you sincerely love is all that matters. It is what life is. Your career, your wealth, all the things you work hard for will make your vacation time seem worth your while. But only your family time will make you smile.
July 31st, 2009 at 12:40 am
Funny, I was reading today a report of a Greek newspaper about the statistics of vacation-taking in the European Union. According to the report, Germans had on average 30 days off a year, with Greeks at 23 days annually. As a Greek-born working adult, it was hard to conceive getting less than a “month’s” vacation from my employer. Of course, having spent the past dozen years in the US, I now know that Americans are overworked and well-deserving of their time off. Two weeks off seems to be the average, with one week the norm; three weeks off is paradise.