No matter what industry you’re in, there are certain cycles to the fiscal year, to the calendar year. For me, as a researcher in corporate America, I’ve always noticed how December can be quiet, or frenzied, depending solely on whether you’re the service provider (frenzied) or the client (quiet.)

July, when you’re client side, is a snooze fest. Summer vacation. Kids out of school, executives “summering’ as a verb.

Why has it taken me 20+ years to get with it? To take breaks when other do?

Maybe because it is not how we did it every summer when I was a kid. Some families have the same ritual: my partner’s family had a summer cottage in Delaware that they shared with three other families, rotating the weeks throughout the summer. My family was on the move one out of every three summers. Literally, hauling our essential possessions with us, but following 20,000 pounds of our furniture to the next assigned duty station, seeing the country along the way. The other two out of three summers were spent sprawled at the local public pool or nearby beach, but, soon enough, summers involved working as much as you could to earn as much as you could with all this “free time” we had as kids.

Working was (and is,) a way of earning money, but also respect in my family.

Working hard gains respect and earns the overtime pay, sure. But taking breaks…taking regular breaks, is important. Taking time off to restore, hell, it’s all the rage now. Self-care, saying “no” to things that don’t fully fulfill you. It’s what my social media feeds me: chatter about how women tend to put others first…blah blah blah…leading to burnout. Yes, early in my career I put the job first. It defined me.

But not anymore. I take breaks as needed, often, and with predictability! Dedicating time to well-developed hobbies. When others are out on PTO, I delay the game, push the project, stall if I have to. I used to shoulder the responsibility, but I just don’t care enough anymore. Or rather, my shrink would say, I’m putting more healthy boundaries in place. Taking breaks early and often and as needed.

Long winter ski breaks, and regularly summering at the beach: yes, folks, I’m designing the second half of my life; and the mere ten more working years I have before I’m able to collect social security (insert obligatory doubtful statement that’ll it’ll still be a valid financial vehicle by the year 2032) around the rest and restoration I’ve been lacking, wanting and needing all these years. Funny, this evokes images of Mr + Mrs. Howell on Gilligan’s island: come along lovey…