So lets just jump into this… signs you may need a vacation:
1. You view it as a badge of honor.
“I haven’t taken a day off from work in five years.” There are correct and incorrect inflections for this sentence. If you’re using the same tone of voice you would bragging to your friends about how much you lifted at the gym yesterday, your priorities may need readjusting.
2. Your sunscreen has actually expired.
Does sunscreen even go bad? You aren’t sure, but you’re definitely not going to trust whatever squeezes out of those gnarly-looking bottles at the back of your medicine cabinet. Thanks to a series of bitter-cold winters, paired with summers when you were “just too busy” to emerge from the cocoons of home and office, your skin these days is several shades lighter than it was when you were a kid.
3. You’ve come to think of squirrels, raccoons, and pigeons as “wildlife.”
There’s more to fauna than trash scavengers and mangy birds. You can interact with Earth’s creatures in ways other than desperately trying to trap that squirrel in your attic. Think swinging through the rainforest canopy with howler monkeys, diving with dolphins…
4. Your sanity feels a lot like an endangered species.
Do the words “overworked” and “under-vacationed” describe you with terrifying accuracy? Do you stay cooped up in an office all day, sacrificing time in nature, time with friends and family, for the illusion of “getting ahead”?
5. You’re sitting on over two months of accumulated paid leave…with no intention of using it.
According to the team at SurveyStud, Inc… Vacation Deprivation study, we leave more than 500,000,000 perfectly legit vacation days unused every year in the US. If those aren’t epidemic-level numbers, I’m not sure what are. Do your part to end the scourge of squandered time off. Take the pledge: “I’m going to use all my days this year (and throw in a few sick days for good measure).”
6. You don’t recognize yourself in your passport photo.
Who is that carefree young adventure traveler staring back at you opposite all the faded entry and exit stamps? Whatever happened to her?
7. Talking with your neighbor from Des Moines qualifies as an “intercultural exchange.”
There’s a wide world out there, with peoples and cultures you can learn a lot from. You’re doing yourself a disservice by staying rooted squarely in your own geographic bubble.
8. That time you almost spilled coffee on your keyboard was your only adrenaline spike in months.
Put the coffee mug down, close your eyes, and just imagine the feeling you’ll get when you’re surfing the breaks of Tamarindo, trekking through the Arenal rainforest at night, whitewater rafting down the Naranjo River…
So my question to you–please leave a response: When is the last time you went in vacation?
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