the zoomcation

Last week I took my first Zoomcation.

It was a 7-day break from Zoom. Can I state the obvious? What. A. Gamechanger.

I woke up Monday thrilled that “going outside” was on the menu. I capped my emailing at two hours a day and gave myself permission to go on unusual excursions that don’t typically fit into my work week. I drafted this newsletter poolside thanks to Swimply. I cooked my way through Nok Suntaranon’s incredible Thai cookbook. I finally cracked open the second book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I reminded myself daily that everything (!) was (!) gonna (!) be (!) okay (!) because this was a scary experiment.

This Zoomcation’s been a long time coming. It started in 2018 as a thought experiment while taping a podcast episode with my co-host, Brad Farris. We wondered, “What would it look like if we did a digital detox for just one day?” I was terrified. Disappear from my inbox? Miss all of those social media posts? Who do I think I am?

We tried it out anyway. One day became one weekend. One weekend became one week every year.

Then the tech purge began. I quit Calendly. I stopped leaving it up to other people as to how I wanted to move through my schedule. Leaving Facebook took months of consideration before I did it but I haven’t looked back even once. A year later, Instagram. Now I miss out on celebrity birthdays and deaths and what meme is so funny and…I haven’t looked back even once.

The Zoomcation served up some obvious truths:

• Zoom fatigue is real. I’d heard about it but wasn’t clear on what it felt like until I stepped away from the screen.

• Treating the week as a staycation with a sprinkle of work (rather than the reverse) filled me with such joy that I felt like I was getting away with something.

And then there were the surprises:

• “I’ll do it when I…” is a pile of garbage. It never arrives and yet I always believe it’s coming. I’ve worked hard to ignore it. (You may be reading this thinking, “Good for her but I could never because my schedule is too crazy.” Ezzzzzackly.)

• It hit hard how much a clock has quietly been running my life. When you get to roam through the same 24 hours as everyone else on your own time and at your own pace, it feels so different. We’re familiar with vacation downtime but it’s not the same thing. I could feel my brainwheels slowing down. I stopped checking the clock a billion times a day and relished the break from my commitments.

• The only way out of WorryWorld is to exercise. No amount of relaxation can do the trick.

• Back at work, the happiness I feel when I’m with clients is the refreshed and reinvigorated kind. They can feel it, too.

Here's the plan: I’ll take one Zoomcation per month through December to see whether my business crumbles, my life implodes, or I continue to love it.

Have you thought about playing with your schedule? What are you waiting for?

See you soon,

jill