The Workend

After my husband had been away most of the week for a work teambuilding event, I packed my bag (laundry basket, if I’m honest) and drove off to our cabin on Friday night. A full weekend of boundaryless working lay ahead of me, topped off with an outdoor day on Monday. I only had one goal in mind - write a book chapter for an encyclopedia that I had been invited to write.

When I set goals like this, I can get a bit compulsive. I consider myself a recovered workaholic, but on weekends like this, I have a pretty big relapse of workaholism. My Saturday and Sunday looked identical, with the one difference that I took two hiking breaks on Saturday and one longer SUP break on Sunday. My schedule looked something like this:

7:15 breakfast

7:45 Writing block 1

10:15 Detether from computer for fresh air

11:00 Writing block 2

1:00 Lunch

1:30 Writing block 3

3:30 Detether from computer for fresh air

4:30 Writing block 4

7:00 Dinner

8:00 Be a vegetable

My relentlessness paid off. On Sunday evening, when it was time have dinner with three colleagues who were in town for a leadership conference, I wrapped up the last sentence of my book chapter. Done. Time for fun and relaxation.

In September, my husband and I made the plan to give each other one weekend to ourselves each quarter of the year. That is four weekends per year. We can travel, work out, work, do nothing, whatever we want. This first time, I used my weekend to get up to speed with work. It had been feeling behind for weeks. And during those weeks I had that nagging feeling that a few manuscripts needed to be delivered. Admittedly, with the exception of the book chapter, there were no real deadlines, just my own pressure. But it felt fantastic to cross off a project and have space in my head to move on to the next, or maybe even to think about new projects.

These work splurges only work when you take time to recover after. On Monday, my colleagues were still in town and even though an atmospheric river was pouring down (for 4 days straight we learned later), my adventure-thirsty friends thought it was a great day for rafting. The plan was to raft down a river to get to a unique trailhead on the other side of the river, then hike a trail that followed a waterfall to the top. I had too often declined my colleague’s adventure invitations, so this time, I just had to go. My work was done. My kids were taken care of. I had run out of excuses. I braced myself for a day of being wet and cold. We certainly got soaked, but never cold. Floating on the river was surprisingly easy and tons of fun. I had no idea that seals lived in this river. A bunch of them were curiously following us, wondering what sane human would go rafting on a day like this (I was with them on that thought).

The hike was less easy, scary at times (one wrong step meant fatal consequences), but absolutely stunning. The views could have been straight out of a movie. And, less of a surprise perhaps given the weather, we were the only group out there. It almost felt surreal, staring in awe at the powerful waterfall and the holes it had etched through the rock over the years.

When reaching the top, my colleague asked us if there was anything we would want to leave behind on this mountain (figuratively, obviously). I thought about this question for a while. What I really wanted to leave behind, would likely never stay behind. I stayed silent. I also was not entirely sure if leaving the trait behind would be good or bad. My relentlessness, my drive to complete stuff, I often felt imprisoned by it. I often wished I could stop it. But it had also gotten me where I was, and likely would take me to new places.