Self Care with Vacation
“Gone fishin’” The office is closed.
Person fishing at the edge of a lake.
Don’t show up at the office for the first two weeks of September 2019. If you do, you’ll find a sign hung that says, “gone fishin’.”
Just kidding. I don’t fish. When my grandfather tried to take me out in a row boat as a child I only wanted to feed the crickets I had caught in the field to the fish and watch the fish jump up to eat them. Early signs of future vegetarianism in hindsight. And yes I’ve been known to eat crickets in recent years. And no that isn’t that strange!
But I digress... this post is about self-care, rest, relaxation, and the value of vacation, with the subtle reminder that the office will be closed during my two weeks away.
At some point it became apparent the importance of distinguishing between a “vacation” and a “trip.” Perhaps just a deep dive into semantics but bear with me.
Vacation and trips are different, what!?
Vacation means stress-free relaxation. An adventure to escape from the everyday to sip coffee for hours, linger in a book and peer out into a blissful landscape. Trips, on the other hand, are adventures in their own right but are often compounded with obligation or external pressures. Or perhaps that is a bit too pessimistic. However, they usually involve an itinerary and Friday night travel returning late on Sunday and I often get home more exhausted than when I left.
Our culture loves to Instagram beautiful snapshots but what does it actually look like to be self employed and carve out the time to take a true real vacation to hit the reset button? I’ll give you some insight into what it looks like for me:
Self Care Vacation How To Guide for the Self-Employed: A 5-Step Guide
Step 1 - When you are both employer and employee you don’t really get PTO. Instead you have to look at your earnings based on less than 52 weeks/year, otherwise you’ll never stop working!
Step 2 - Ignore all the other chiropractors who have been in the business forever and say things like, “you can’t take 2 weeks off in a row--you’ll lose all your patients.”
Step 3 - Hope this belief is true. *Ahem - Dear patients, I will be back. Please don’t run off and find someone else to take my place.
Step 4 - Validate your 2 week long getaway with weak research (ie a survey) supporting this action and just do it!
Step 5 - Decide this other research study says vacations even longer are better. Spend some time contemplating the idea of more is always better. (Is it?) Then work on convincing my partner that 3 weeks is a totally legitimate new goal for next year.
This year, I’m heading off to Montana in hope to glimpse some mountain goats and wake up in quiet solitude surrounded by mountains and wilderness. I look forward to returning and jumping back refreshed and with a few extra nature points in my pockets.
Mountains with glass reflection on a lake.
But enough about me…what about you?!
I love asking my patients what upcoming plans and vacations they have on the books. Yes, I like to live vicariously through all of you but also it is important for me to understand you as a person, your likes, interests and support network.
Stress has a way of creeping into healing and exacerbates the physical pain we have. If we are stressed chronically then we become more inflamed and our healing times lengthen making combating an injury more frustrating and challenging.
Vacation & self-care are integral to stress management
They help our nervous system reset and create balance between the parasympathetic (rest & digest) and the sympathetic (fight or flight) a balance that is integrally important in our bodies ability to heal.
Do you need another excuse to plan that vacation? I just essentially wrote you a Doctor’s note.
So go on, plan a vacation already a few weeks squished next together preferably. Get a house/cat sitter, bring your sunscreen and take a sip of your favorite beverage as you kick your legs up and breathe.
Oh, and then come back to the office and tell me about it!