31 Days of Giving Permission . . . TO TAKE A BREAK

So, we took this trip.
And I phrase that very carefully:
this was a trip and not a vacation.

There is a huge difference, you know?
There are similarities —
you go somewhere that is not your home,
you travel with someone you like to be with,
you see and do things you don’t usually do.

BUT . . . a vacation (at least in my mind) is going to one
(or at the most, two) places for an extended time,
unpacking once, settling in.
Day trips are certainly allowable in this definition,
but at the end of each day,
you return to your home-away-from-home.

Trips, on the other hand, require mileage of some sort.
Generally, you follow an itinerary,
you visit numerous places at some distance from one another,
and you pack and unpack with regularity.

We’ve had two trips this year,
one by river boat and bus,
the other by automobile.
We also had a vacation.

All three were wonderful, each in their own way. 

Our most recent trip involved a very people- and commitment-heavy front-end.
We reconnected with friends from 45 years ago during the first two days,
then traveled to another state for 2 days of meetings for my husband
and in-real-life blog connections for me.

WE  HAD A GREAT TIME.

But at the end of those very intense four days,
we needed a break. 

So we built one in.
We took two days on the beach at Kennebunport, Maine,
before digging into the heavy-duty driving and multiple
hotel rooms required by a Fall Foliage Tour.

I cannot recommend this break-taking thing highly enough. 

Do  you ever feel peopled out?
Breathless from too many responsibilities?
In need of a small space in which to breathe?

Take a break.

It doesn’t have to be on the beach.
It doesn’t have to be anywhere other than where you are.
It just needs to break the pattern.

Moving from noise to quiet,
shifting from many people to a few,
reading a great book,
taking a walk,
taking a nap.

Maybe you call this decompression,
maybe you call it saving your sanity.
Maybe you’re so unfamiliar with this concept
that you have no idea what to call it!

And if that’s the case,
then you need this more than any of the rest of us.

We all need to change it up from time to time,
to step back, step down, step aside.
To STOP. 

I call it Sabbathing. 

We thoroughly enjoyed our two-day Sabbath on the coast of Maine.
And then we got back in the car and drove. 

These photos are from those two days.