the time this article is published, I will already have set up my cute Out of Office message, closed my laptop as a work laptop and reopened it as a personal one, because I only have one, and I will have gone on leave with the aim of completing one more task, the final one of the season and perhaps the most demanding: going on holiday.
One thing that really gets to me is the social pressure surrounding summer holidays. I am a winter person. I rest when it is cold, and yet every summer I am expected to take part in a nationwide exercise in leaving home.
This year, I feel as though I do not have the option not to go on holiday. Everyone tells me I need to rest. From the CEO of fyi: to my therapist. And I imagine that, possibly, probably, they may have a point, however much this development annoys me. My difficulty in switching into holiday mode lies in the fact that I do not understand the concept of holidays in the same way most people do.
For me, a holiday is not leaving my home and going to Koufonisia, only to later spot myself in a video posted by another news outlet, exhausted by the hot wind and searching for one free square metre of beach.
My body knows perfectly well how to go on holiday. My brain, on the other hand, struggles. It keeps functioning relentlessly as though it were still at work. It does not rest. It simply changes the subject of its overanalysis.
It will sit there assessing the size of the pebbles and the cleanliness of the sand, comparing this year’s leave with last year’s, calculating for the thousandth time how many days remain, wondering whether I am resting enough, and getting anxious. And if I am anxious, what kind of holiday is that? If I wanted stress, I could have stayed at home.
My brain turns even rest into a project.
My brain turns even rest into a project: I must sleep a lot because I do not sleep in Athens. I must read the three books I brought, because what will the authors say? I must write my own book now that I have time, instead of reading other people’s. I must stay off my phone. I must talk to my friends. I must spend quality time with them. What I must do, what I must not do. Not once did I simply think.
As if it were not enough that I have to perform at work. Now I have to perform on holiday too. When you learn to live with stress, tasks and deadlines, it is hard to shake them off overnight. And by the time I almost manage it, that night will probably be the last one before I return to the workforce.
Fully prepared, of course, for the press conference titled “How was your holiday?”
I will already have prepared the key statements: “I rested”, “I ate”, “I did not want to come back”. As for the rumours that I was online on Slack, no comment.
A mind that is used to being in a constant state of panic does not interpret silence as rest, but as suspicious activity. The moment I have nothing to solve, my brain creates something. It has an endless entrepreneurial spirit.
Still, there is a silver lining. Lately, I have been consciously trying to observe my thoughts like a third person from a distance, watching me sit in a corner and create them.
The trick, at least for me, because we are not all equally troubled, is to allow my holiday thoughts to exist without having to lead anywhere, without needing to open my notes and write them down. To let them pass and disappear. That, I think, I can do.
We have collectively convinced ourselves that overthinking is something negative. I disagree. At what exact point does the “over” get added to the “thinking”? After which thought? The third or the twenty-third? Because if it is the third, I am sorry, but we have reached the point where we call thinking overthinking. Since when is thinking a bad thing? Good Lord.
I will do whatever I want.
I am on holiday.
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