Vacations Rule!

It's amazing the emotions that you go through when you are planning, about to go on, partaking in, and back from a vacation.  Allow me to explain further...

Planning a vacation is awesome!!  You generally do this part with plenty of time.  You pick a location.  Pick the people you want to come with you (or selectively eliminate the one's you do not).  And then you spend the next 6 months thinking about how this vacation will never come.  You find mini-milestones...like a holiday...and you say, only 3 more months until we are away!  It feels like forever.  You still have moments of excitement that well up inside of you, especially when you are at work and they are talking long-term project roll-outs and you know that you will be gone during some of them, so you don't have to worry about it!  Best feeling ever!!  You can say things like, "Oh yeah, I'd love to help, but I am actually going to be out that week."  You look like a rockstar, but you get out of having to do anything.

Whether you thought it would happen or not, the week before vacation arrives.  It's sometimes better than the actual vacation.  You can't start any projects at work because you'll be out for some time and you can't possibly be M.I.A. should questions arise.  So you decline participation in various things.  You start putting warning messages in your emails out "Oh Mr. or Mrs.  I am happy to help, but should any other questions arise, please contact my back up because I am going to be out all next week."  The email sounds like you genuinely care that this person may have questions, but the truth is, you are wiping your hands clean from their issue altogether.  Meeting invites come into your inbox, you respond without checking your calendar "Decline with Comment" and you tell the meeting coordinator that you are going to be on PTO (paid time off).  You don't tell them when you are coming back for fear that they will reschedule the meeting and you will have to actually sit through it.  Horrible.  The week before vacation is best!  You make random stops at the store after work.  You leave piles of clothes around your house.  You make several lists (which you never use to pack anyways, but making them makes you feel more organized...it's all an illusion).  You are ready to go on vacation! 

Then the morning comes and you are off for the next week.  You don't think about work or school.  You don't think about the looming projects.  You don't think about your poor co-workers back at the ranch trying to cover your a** while you are gone.  You don't think about any of that.  What you focus on is being with the one's you love.  Having the time of your life.  Are you going to take a shower before you go play outside or after?  Are you going to bother putting on make-up?  The toughest decision might be whether to go out for dinner or whether to stay in?  Your brain gets a chance to actually take a rest from expense reports, deadlines, complaints, etc.  Sure, you may check your Blackberry once in a while to delete emails from people that blatantly ignore your out of office, but that stuff is easy!  Being on vacation is the best feeling in the world.

But then the vacation starts coming to an end, and depression sets in.  And I am not talking about a little bit of dread that enters the pit of your stomach; I am talking full on depression.  The kind where you don't want to do anything for fear that tomorrow, the first day back to work, will come.  The kind where you cry thinking about having to work on that spreadsheet.  The kind where you think to yourself "I don't even know when my next vacation is going to be.  Where did the time go?"  It totally takes the wind out of your sails.  And then in the office parking lot, you must partake in a soliloquy - pep-talking yourself into going into the office and tackling the come back.  Once in there, you have to sift through all of your emails and decide who is worthy of a response, who isn't, and who's email should be forwarded to your co-workers because it is so riduclous!  Coming back from vacation is so rough, you often wonder why you took a vacation in the first place.  Remember how much fun you had, and thumb through the pictures, and it will remind you why we give ourselves a break from the everyday.

Some advice for getting through this emotional rollercoaster....plan a vacation (or a staycation) every few months so you have something wonderful to look forward to.  In the mean time, keep on keeping on...Labor Day will be here before we know it and we'll get a wonderful three-day weekend!