A few years ago, I took my first vacation without checking my inbox and wrote about it here. That post was about taking a one week vacation and staying off email.
But this August, I did something I haven’t done in 10 years. I took two consecutive weeks off.
And tomorrow we are heading home.
Some additional thoughts on re-entry and this vacation
1. i changed my out of office automated message so it now says i’ll be off email for the most part, but Kik or text me if it’s extremely urgent. Over the past two weeks, I had three people reach out due to urgent issues. Victory.
2. I couldn’t stay completely out of my work inbox for two weeks. But I didn’t check it every day. And when I did check it, it was during certain bounded times of the day and no more.
3. Sanebox is a game changer. It’s reducing my inbox re-entry stress big time.
4. We havent watched TV in two weeks. When I’m home I don’t watch a ton of TV but we do watch baseball and have a few HBO favs at the moment. And we overdosed on the Olympics before we left.
The only reason I know about Jeter’s many homers and the Yankees is because of Twitter, Kik and the MLB app on my phone. Otherwise, nada. And it felt pretty damn good.
5. Exercise. Working out on vacation is pure joy. No rush before getting the kids ready to school or an early office meeting. Made being a beach bum the rest of the day feel justified :)
6. The only time i used my mac on this trip was to process photos in Lightroom each night from the pics I took during the day and an occasional blog post.
7. The Mophie juicepack was a godsend. I’m happy to be a backer of POP and looking forward to bringing that along on my next trip.
8. Apps I used during the trip each day: Foursquare, Maps, Twitter, Tumblr, Lift, MLB, VSCO Cam, exfm and Runkeeper (on work out days). Twitter gave me all of my news. Tumblr gave me my media (music, entertainment, fun).
9. i read two books. That’s a first for me believe it or not. Usually i’m too buys with the kids to read a lot. But now the kids are reading a lot. I ended up reading the first two books of the Hunger Games. Yeah, I know I’m pretty late and I haven’t seen the movie. Book 1 is great but I loved Book 2.
10. The amount of electronics this family brings on vacation is getting a bit nuts. On this trip, for a family of 5, we brought:
-one macbook air 11"
-two ipads (so kids could watch movies on the 12 hour flight from boston to hawaii)
-4 kindles
-3 iphones and 1 ipod touch
-two cameras + 4 lenses
The sheer amount of devices and associated chargers feels a bit odd to own and carry around. And it feels like it’s only increasing especially with my continued photography addiction. But at the same time it feels like way too many digital toys for a family vacation. Maybe next time, I’ll leave a few things behind.
Time for me to end this post. We have one last day left and I’m gona make the most of it. I’ll leave you with this pic. It’s one of my favorite from the trip taken during our stay in Kauai.
