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Rediscovering Intentional Living: Lessons from a Double Whammy Vacation

 



Recently I went on vacation with my spouse. We had two vacations in one, we flew to the east coast to attend a wedding and hang out with family, and then we flew home to get our car so we could enjoy a tent/car camping vacation.

Overall the experience was pretty amazing. However, there were things I didn’t take into account before I left. Firstly I didn’t realize how much time away from work I would need. Since we were going to be away for about three weeks I needed a week before we left to organize everything. What everything? Packing for lots of social events surrounding the wedding for example. Packing for a wedding is different than packing to go camping.

We had to prep the car for a long drive in varied conditions. We packed the car with our tent, sleeping bags, pillows, camp gear, shoes for different conditions and more.

In the end, it ended up being perfect, but also time-consuming so I decided to stop writing for a while to focus on our vacation time.

Upon returning home my computer wouldn’t start so that contributed to another week away from work.

What I learned from the downtime is that my focus on writing has been wonderful, I enjoy it and want to continue, but for the past two years, my focus on writing has come a the cost of other things I really enjoy. While my computer was being fixed I gardened, something I enjoy but haven’t pursued. On vacation, we hiked a lot, at least five miles per day - often much more. I enjoy hiking, spending time with my spouse, and spending time daydreaming as I enjoy the scenery.

My aim as a writer is to share how I live intentionally and I confess my obsession with writing felt intentional, however, I never intended to ignore other important areas of my life. I can get focused and anxious if I’m not working on my area of focus, I think I spent two years feeling anxious instead of being as intentional as I can be.

To correct this I will take the following steps-

  • Create a list of my intentions and include tasks that I truly love.

  • Assess the amount of time I need to work on writing each week to satisfy my impulse to get everything written down.

  • Remember that my health is the number one most important focus. I must complete, without fail, all the tasks I need to do to support my health every day. That is eat well, sleep well, and exercise.

  • Create a list of topics that require a bit more research and continue building my catalog of writing with more in-depth blog posts.

  • Post blogs two times per month with better content.

  • Use the time freed up from reduced blog content to write two books, one fiction and one non-fiction.

  • Spend time outside every day.

  • Remember that participation in the moment is as important as the task itself. I intend to be present when I’m completing tasks.

I looked into the concept of intention on Wikipedia and realized that my understanding of intention is limited. Many academics have ideas about intention and the subject has been studied by many with various opinions. For my purposes when writing about intentional living, I’m referring to living on pilot, not auto-pilot. As a person who is perpetually planning for all contingencies, I thrive on routine, but what I learned from my double whammy vacation is that my routine has created some auto-pilot actions that I want to shake up so I can again be the intentional person I strive to be.

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