A long break can give you clarity

This post has nothing to do with motherhood, evolution, or any of my other favorite topics. I promise to return to normal programming in the coming weeks, but I thought this experience was worth writing about.

I just got back from a month in France with my family. My husband is French and we have family there. Taking a month off from work felt like an insane luxury. My husband had to literally negotiate it into his contract with his current employer. Yet in other parts of the world, like most of Europe, taking a month off in the summer and completely disconnecting is a normal thing to do. Studies have repeatedly shown than despite these long holidays, Eruope’s service sector is just as productive as ours is in America. Why? Because taking time to rest is essential to optimal human functioning.

With the exception of my two maternity leaves, which were hell on earth, I have not taken an actual vacation this long since moving back to the US about 6 years ago. There’s something magical about taking that much time off. It’s enough time to literally forget about work and tap into another way of living and thinking. By giving your conscious mind a break, you give your subconscious space to work things out. In my case, here’s what happened:

Before leaving, my life felt like a mess. I shut down by sustainable fashion business, Hera California, in April and since then I’ve been scrambling to figure out my next move. I took on some contract work doing product marketing strategy for a friend’s startup, which I enjoyed. It felt like a relief to be earning real money again after a year of working my ass off for nothing. I simultaneously plunged headlong into this newfound obsession with evolutionary biology. I convinced a professor at UCLA to let me co-author a scientific paper with her on the topic of evolutionary mismatch and postpartum depression (it is now in peer review) and loved it. I realized I want to go deeper, maybe write a book, maybe get a PHD! At the same time I have been feeling very done with Northern California. I want real summers and some distance from tech culture. But where to next? LA? The Southwest of France.

I am the kind of person who likes to work things out logically. I have journals and charts and PowerPoints dedicated to answering these questions for myself. I have vision boards and Excel lists of pros and cons. Sometimes I go for long walks and talk to myself. But at some point, the harder and longer I thought about what I wanted, the more confused I became. That’s when you know it’s time to put it away.

The first week in France I was still thinking about it, still updating my Excel table of pros and cons, still voicing my confusion over glasses of champagne to anyone who would listen. By the second week I was still responding to emails about my research paper and trying to keep up with my Instagram content, but my mind was increasingly occupied by questions of where to find the best croissants in the neighborhood and whether I should buy white or red for that night’s dinner. By the third week I was sitting in the sun on a sandy beach by the Mediterranean Sea thinking, who the fuck cares anyway? Does it even matter at all what I do as long as I can dip my toes in the cold, salty sea water on a hot day? By the fourth week I forgot that there is even such a thing as work. Qu’est-ce que ca veut dire, travailler?

Here’s the amazing part. 3 days back from our trip, and sufficiently recovered from jet lag to be able to think straight again, everything seems obvious. Not only do I know what I want next, but the little questions I was agonizing over, the daily this and that, have also somehow been resolved. We have an ideal childcare situation lined up for fall. My book outline is clear in my head. I no longer feel intimidated by finding an agent and publisher. I have a strategy for building out my freelance business. I even feel more certain about what I want to wear in the morning. Never have I been more productive in my life than during that month of vacation!

So if you’re struggling with big questions in your life, I encourage you, if at all humanly possible, to take a long break. Go somewhere far away and explore. Disconnect. Distract yourself with beaches or mountains or food and wine, or whatever it is that makes you happy, and don’t stop until work is a distant memory. Then come back and face your problems. I guarantee they will feel easier.