Hey there, friends! As I posted last week on my Instagram page, I didn’t release a blog post last Friday because I was on vacation. I didn’t want the hassle and stress of trying to release a blog post on vacation. So I didn’t! It was freeing.
What I did do was decide to take a recovery day on the tail end of my vacation. I had great intentions to write a complete blog post on that day, to be able to release it today as usual. However, the universe had other plans in mind. So today, I bring you instead a short blog post with some pictures from our vacation and some musings on my first experience with a “vacation recovery day.” Because that’s all I’ve got in me this week. And I’m letting that be ok. I hope you enjoy!
At the job where I currently work, the one where I’ve set good boundaries to better enjoy the 9-5, I work with a lot of Gen Xers who give me a lot of interesting advice. One of these Gen Xers happens to be my boss, who early on in our working relationship introduced me to the concept of taking “vacation buffer days.” I had never heard of this type of day before, so she explained to me that she will often take an extra day of PTO (paid time off) at the beginning and at the end of her vacation (if she’s traveling). She went on to explain that the purpose of taking the extra day off at the beginning of the trip is to be able to finish up any of the work she wasn’t able to get done on her actual last day of work (hmmm…boundary red flag??). The day at the end would be for easing herself back into the daily grind (sounding a bit better…).
At first, I was a bit appalled by this. I felt that the first day off, the extra day at the beginning of the vacation to finish up work, was completely ridiculous and against my (personal) boundaries. Why should I have to take an EXTRA, hard-earned, precious day of PTO to do more work??
But the extra day off at the end of the trip? Now that, I could get down with.
I had never done such a thing, but I decided to experiment with this concept on the recent trip Mr. Dink and I took to Florida.
This was our first time traveling together, to a vacation destination, since our honeymoon in Sept 2021. It was our first time flying together to a vacation destination since 2019. It was also only partly a vacation, since we were going to see and stay with my in-laws.
Like me, Mr. Dink has divorced parents. His father lives year-round in Florida, and we hadn’t visited him there since 2019. His mom is a snow bird and winters in Florida, and has been begging us to come down and visit since she first started doing this (right before the pandemic). We were overdue on both accounts, and with the COVID-19 situation the way it is now, we finally felt like this was the time. We planned the trip to be over President’s Day weekend, so that I would not have to take that holiday (Monday) as a PTO day and could instead use that extra day as a recovery day at the end of our vacation.
So, how did it go?
Well, first of all, we had a great time. Although staying with Mr. Dink’s parents wasn’t necessarily the vacation we would choose, we knew that going into it. We prepared our mindset. We knew this was more of a visit to see and spend time with family, which is important to us, rather than a pure vacation doing everything we wanted, where we got to call all the shots.
His parents wanted to show us how they live and take us to see and do the things they like to do. We were still in sunny Florida, had our own bedroom (with an actual door) and our own bathroom, and got to go to the beach and enjoy the sunshine. The beach was the place where I felt the most pure joy on the trip, like I was a kid again. It was lovely, and living in Vermont, it was SO NICE to be warm (sometimes even downright hot) for an entire week in February.
And how did the vacation recovery day go?
Would I do it again? My answer is yes.
100%, absolutely, no hesitation, YES.
We spent all day Tuesday traveling back to Vermont. We made it home in time for dinner, so we treated ourselves to takeout, knowing we could go shopping the next day: on vacation recovery day. That night, in our own bed, I slept better than I feel like I’ve ever slept. To me, there’s no place like home. I woke up pretty groggy and immediately breathed a sigh of relief that I did NOT have to go to work.
My biggest learning from vacation recovery day
I drastically overestimated how much I would get done. I tried to cram too much into my vacation recovery day.
It just so happened to be the day our cleaning person was coming, so I needed to get up and get ready to leave the house earlier than I would have liked.
I had scheduled an oil change for that day, and I regretted the time I chose. It didn’t flow well with the rest of the things I wanted to get done.
I had planned to write a complete blog post at a coffee shop while my car was in the shop. I did get some writing done, but it was a struggle, and it was no where near enough writing to get a whole post published for Friday.
Because I hadn’t been in tune with my calendar for over a week, I almost forgot about the Ash Wednesday service at my church that I said I would be there for.
Because I had neglected my personal emails for over a week while I was gone, I spent almost 2 hours just going through, responding to, and writing new emails.
The moral of the story here: I could’ve used more time. I wanted more time. But I gave myself grace (and this blog post was born instead!) This was just an experiment after all. I could do things differently next time.
So, what would I do differently next time?
At the end of my vacation recovery day, I said the following to Mr. Dink: I wish I had taken off the rest of the week.
We got back from Florida on Tuesday after traveling all day. My recovery day was Wednesday. Even though I only had 2 days left in my work week, it was still 2 days too many. I didn’t feel completely settled and recovered from being away.
And you know what? Even though it would have been 2 extra, precious days of PTO, that’s the beauty of our financial independence journeys. Money gives you options. If I run out of PTO days? I have the privilege of being able to take UNpaid time off. And likely, I would even need to anyway. Because I always scramble to use all my PTO days by the end of the year. Life is too short. Take those vacation recovery days if you want them!
How about you? Have you ever taken vacation recovery days? What are your tips and tricks for vacationing and traveling? I’d love to hear from you! Until next week.