Every summer Hubby and I take a week-long vacation with one intention, one sole purpose: to relax and unwind from our normally stressful, busy lives.
To be clear, we love our lives. It’s just that the day-to-day stresses build up. We try to counteract stress with daily gym sessions, but sometimes work or life gets in the way.
We look forward to this vacation all year long. In this case, it had been one year since we had taken a vacation.
There was a lot of pressure on this summer sabbatical, to say the least.
And we were SO looking forward to it! Meeting our friends at the resort, lounging by the pool, golfing, visiting the spa, reading, eating and basically doing nothing more strenuous than asking the cabana boy to refill our water pitcher.
Most importantly, reconnecting with each other. Funny how two people can get so busy that you need to take time out to connect again on a deeper level, with conversations more meaningful than “Did the dog poop?” and “Not rotisserie chicken again!”
Which leads me to explain this year’s vacation, theme: “Mindfulness”. Being fully present and engaged in what you are doing and where you are; not on something else.
Everything was planned and we were ready to go and be Mindful.
Then a family situation necessitated a date change, and the dog sitter wasn’t available for the new dates, and suddenly our luxurious week-plus vacation was truncated to a four night get-away.
Life has a way of messing with the best plans.
By the time we actual left, I was a basket-case; a bundle of stressed-out nerves from all that had happened.
Even so, I was determined to practice “mindfulness”.
- Driving away from the airport, I had to remind myself to put away my iPhone and look at the scenery. That’s when stress test number one came: out of nowhere a rock hit our windshield. No cars anywhere, we did not drive under a bridge, the road was smooth. It literally fell from the sky.
- I was mindful of that rock.
- There was a brief encounter at check-in that almost had me call the manager, but I refrained, trying to be mindful of the beauty of our favorite resort.
- Then I became mindful that I had left my pool things – hat, sunglasses, and tote bag – at home. Sigh.
- We finally made it to a cabana and Hubby’s iPhone went off with work-related issues. Of this I was VERY mindful.
“Steve Jobs ruined my life!” he blurted out. “I can’t even take a minute of vacation anymore, because I’m ALWAYS connected and someone can ALWAYS find me, thanks to him.”
This led to a discussion of why we brought phones to the pool in the first place. (We needed them for selfies, doh!)
A bigger discussion followed, of my stress from the recent family emergency, my work, Hubby’s work, our geriatric, semi-blind dog that has a little doggie dementia, and suddenly I was in tears. In the cabana.
I was mindful of those tears. And not in a good way; this was not how vacation was supposed to be.
Determined to get back on track, and not let Mr. Jobs’ invention control us, we started over.
And things improved each day.
Mindfulness is not easy to practice. We had to work at it each day, remembering to think about where we were, what we doing, to put down the iPhones and really engage with life and each other.
Hubby did have to answer a few emails; I did have to respond to a couple of texts about the dog and family matters. The rest of the time we tried to limit our posting of photos or using the phones at all.
By the time we left we were reluctant to pick up our old habits of being constantly connected, as Steve Jobs intended. We appreciate his devices and what they can do for us, but we realize that by being constantly tuned in, we have tuned out so much.
So that’s why I hate Steve Jobs, for making a device so powerful that we have lost our true personal connection. We need to be mindful of our time spent with it and not let it control us.
Like Tami, I was terminated once (By my best friend, BTW – he is now on the board of the agency I lead, so I got him back – ha!), but you don’t have to be unemployed to learn something from this book. 
