Hectic World, Escape on Holiday!
Business owners are driven, and ambitious. They are the first one to arrive, and the last one to leave work everyday. This is necessary to be successful even if you are not a business owner. To get ahead in this life, one cannot be a clock watcher. In addition to working as much as 50 hours a week, there are home duties, family duties, and one must get in their exercise to stay healthy. In talking to many business owners, and career oriented people, they have one thing in common; they don’t often take a vacation by themselves. Many will take the family on vacation, and have described it as hectic as work. They came back more exhausted than when they left, so they decided by this experience that vacationing wasn’t for them. When it was mentioned, that perhaps the vacation they needed is solo in nature, where you only do what you want to do, when you want to do it, or do nothing at all, the concept was totally foreign to them. It was more apparent, if they were of the female persuasion.
A vacation by oneself is an experience in self renewal and discovery. The Tennessee Mountains is an amazing destination. You can do as little, or as much as you want. They have cabins to rent, hotels to stay in, resorts, and camping. This spans across all price ranges from $400-$1000 a day, to 12.00 a day for camping in state parks. The Gatlinburg area looked very promising, so I chose a cabin. My cabin was back in the woods with eight other cabins that were mostly empty during the week. I stayed two weeks.
What do you do when you are there alone? Whatever crosses your mind is a good start. I had in mind when I left, some things I absolutely wanted to do. These were, white water rafting, horseback riding, and hiking in the mountains. Those things I arranged before I left home. Then the rest of the holiday, was planned around those things. My cabin had a hot tub, so every night I poured myself a glass of wine, and soaked my cares away. I am not a night lifer so I had brought movies, I never have time for, and took my little DVD player and watched them on the patio while the sounds of the babbling brook, and birds, melded with my boxed set of all “The Godfather” movies ever made, and season one and two of ER. I was often hitting the sack about 3am content, and happy.
It was the afternoon sun that often woke me up in the morning, not the sound of to do lists and phone calls from clients. I read two novels in one sitting, and collected rocks, on my hike. Really whatever notion I had I did. No agenda, no particular time to eat or sleep, and plenty of self indulgence. Some of that self indulgence, involved getting a massage, and a manicure, and pedicure. The horseback riding was adventurous, as was the white water rafting. I have found if you sprinkle in things you have never done before, with the comfortable and familiar, it makes for a wonderful balance. It was the most relaxing holiday I had ever spent alone. So, if you are feeling stressed, and the last vacation with the family just didn’t do it for you, consider taking a Holiday with yourself instead. The first time is the scariest, but after that, you get quite used to it, and it may even become a yearly event.
