WTWN #99 - "My Summer Vacation"

Overplanning and The Value of Small Wins

"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time." - John Lubbock, The Use of Life (1894)

"It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?"

-Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)

A shout-out to those people who try to do too much.

I’m looking at you, me.

Summer vacation, or summer holiday as we call it in Europe, should be a reset—a time to relax, yes, but also an opportunity to catch up on things you can’t find time for during the rest of the year.

This year, for me, that meant finishing drafts of poems and stories, and catching up on reading, household projects, and decluttering.

Unfortunately, I had delusions of grandeur that I might also revise my dad’s family history that I’m helping whip into shape for publication, a task I estimated, unrealistically, at about eight focused hours.

Instead, the days of my summer holiday disappeared into driving and train trips, junkets to the beach, and other spontaneous outings. Often, full days were spent looking after the kids. I never cracked open my dad’s book despite lugging it and associated paperwork all over Finland in my backpack for a month.

Without the scaffolding of a work schedule, I lost track of what day it was on more than one occasion.

It was more than just overplanning.

"We are distracted with the demands of life, and when we finally get away, we load our days with so much that we return more tired than before." -- Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea (1955)

Besides the proposed book editing, my holiday to-do list had included vague tasks like “fix the deck” that hadn’t been broken into manageable pieces.

I managed to maintain my 2,000-day Duolingo streak, but only with the help of the “Streak Repair” feature. (That feature reveals a lot about how I hold myself accountable.) I lost my 93-day Wordle streak because my schedule got so wacky that I was doing it after midnight for the following day instead of in the morning.

As my holiday came to an end, I felt that familiar back-to-work dread mixed with guilt over unrealized plans. Even multiple all-nighters wouldn’t have fixed it. The week before I went back to work, the furniture was out of place from a painting project. The living room was an obstacle course: beds were stacked against the walls, and laundry baskets overflowed. There was hardly a place to sit and reflect on the state of disorder.

But amid the mess, small things started to happen. Tasks that had been blocked since the start of the holiday were getting done. Life was coming back up to speed.

I picked up a new bed for my daughter. The next day, I got a new bed for my son. Those two small tasks were significant to check off the list, and they were clear, achievable steps.

As I re-enter work life, I remember the value of small wins. Not the big, ambitious stuff that was on my so-called “must get done before the holiday” list, but moments that go as planned because they are simple. Make the coffee. Do Wordle in the morning. Show up for that thing you said you’d do, even if only to start it.

It may not be heroism, though a small case might be made that it is. But it’s still the opposite of chaos. And sometimes, after holidays that promise rest but deliver entropy, that’s enough.