Even Philosophers Need a Vacation
The mind, body, and spirit all need a break from time to time.
As you’re reading this, I’m away on my annual trip to the Pennsic War. This is a huge event with the medieval reenactment society I’ve been playing with for nearly 35 years. While at this event, I’m with some of my favorite people hanging out, fencing, gaming, and generally enjoying time away from my usual life.
Over the years, the necessity of this break has become increasingly clear. Leading up to it, I find myself slightly irritable, easily flustered by things, and generally agitated.
But, you might say, you’re a self-proclaimed philosopher and creative. Doesn’t that mean you’re doing what you love? How can you need to take a break or vacation from that?
The short answer is because I’m only human. Life, everyone everywhere, I need to pause, reset, and take breaks from the grind. Because even as a philosopher and creative, my nose is always to the grindstone.
Creative work is still work.
A vacation lets me reset
As a philosopher, I write 3 blogs a week. EVERY week, even when I’m on vacation. (Yes, yes, I wrote this a week ahead and pre-scheduled it. It still counts!) If each of these blogs is around 1100, and I write 52 of them a year, that’s 57,200 words a year.
That’s just my blogs. I write 1500 words a day of fiction. I frequently exceed this, but let’s just go with that number. Fifteen-hundred words a day, 5 days a week, is 7,500 words a week. Over 50 weeks (I give myself 2 weeks off a year), that’s 375,000 words. That’s about the word count of multiple enormous novels, like Dickens’ David Copperfield and Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. That’s a lot of words and ultimately pages for any given book.
And that’s not all I do. I spend time editing my work, recording audiobooks, and marketing my books. And work part-time doing consulting, coaching, and website upkeep, building and SEO. So, yeah, that means I work and work hard. I need a vacation!
Funny thing is, this is a working vacation. I’m one of the principals of the fencing community at Pennsic this year, and am responsible for oversight of safety as such. I get to do some fencing, but mostly I’m observing combat and keeping an eye out for the safety of my friends.
Still, this is a vacation from my normal life activities. I’m not writing or editing on my daily schedule. Apart from chatting up my books with friends and new friends, I’m not marketing. I’m getting rest. I’m resetting my mind, body, and spirit.
Creatives and philosophers work hard
When creative and philosophical work isn’t your hobby, but your vocation, even when you love it, you need to take a breather. Without a break, without a vacation, you can and will go mad.
Working as a creative and philosopher doesn’t insulate me from the world and all the craziness therein. Hell, I’d argue I’m very, very in touch with it. So being impacted by it is unavoidable. And let’s be honest, the state of the world is currently exhausting.
While it’s been necessary for me to reconcile with myself that I do, in fact, work hard, it’s equally important to recognize I’m worthy and deserving of taking a break. Ergo, I can go on vacation and get away from the usual grind.
Rest. Reset. Do something not my normal daily routine. And after the 10 days I’m away, I get to come back to it renewed. And that, in turn, will increase the flow and open me to greater creativity and deeper, more insightful philosophy.
A vacation need not be deep
What a vacation looks like for you is probably not what it is for me. And even my form of vacation I go on varies.
I love this event. But packing for it and traveling to it are less appealing. While some of my friends come from a lot further away than I do, my drive is still over 6 hours, and I need to load my car heavily. It takes a lot of stuff to camp comfortably for a week (like a canvas tent, actual tatami mat and bedframe, and so on).
When I vacation with my wife, however, we don’t camp. She’s not a fan of camping or living for a week without a proper roof over her head. One time, she tried to join me on this vacation, and she HATED it. But then, she takes some vacations without me, and we’re good like that.
Even if you take a staycation, away from your normal work and routine, that counts for a chance to relax, reset, and start anew. And no matter who you are or what you do, you’re worthy and deserving of a vacation. Everyone needs to take a break from time to time.
I know I’m fortunate in that I can do this. And I recognize some people can’t take any kind of vacation. If that’s true for you, I hope you can practice some breathing exercises, meditation, or otherwise get some rest so you can relax and reset yourself, too.
So, even though I’m not on a beach sipping a fruity drink, I’m on vacation, resetting, and adjusting my mindset/headspace/psyche self.
What do you do when you can take a vacation?
This is the seventh-hundred-sixty-third (763) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share my philosophy because I desire to make a difference in the world and help as many people as I can to find their empowerment with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to share and/or repost where it might do good for you and others.
The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available here.
Also, please check out my author website for the rest of my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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