We celebrated our anniversary this weekend and it conveniently shimmied up right next to a work conference at the beach. We decided to take an extra two days to celebrate “us.” This is all sorts of lovely…a celebration and a reprieve from the day to day, right?
Yes, of course…but sometimes it’s hard to disconnect from life. It’s been several months of shit moments upon shit moments and if you’re anything like me, you like to control what you can control…which is often work. Even though I worked for two of the four days, I found it hard to shut it down at night and sometimes hard to not pick it back up.
After a little while I realized that work is such a great crutch. We work, we get stuff done, we feel accomplished. Check the box, feel accomplished, check off more of the boxes. It’s a vicious cycle, yet also comforting. We know what to expect. We know what to do and it’s predictable; whereas life is not at all comforting or predictable.
Our getaway was a little capsule of life. We expected to do certain things: walk on the beach, collect shells, paddleboard, swim, eat on the beach…but here’s what actually happened. There was a heat index of 133 and the water temperature was 90; so we ended up in a romantic little cubby-hole of a seafood restaurant where there was music and dancing and incredible air conditioning. We went to go to the local Aquarium (because, air conditioning) and found out that it was mostly outside and so, not air conditioned! We took glorious naps, ate pizza and watched really bad movies on HBO.
Like our getaway, life is not always (or even often) what we expect it to be. It is boiling hot when we want refreshing. But then, glorious rest. And then, pizza. And then sunsets and sailboats. A reprieve from the hard stuff, a much-needed break. We came back refreshed, not because we got what we wanted, but because we got what we needed. And so it is with life, with its continuous reminders to trust the process.
