When you’re away from home for an extended period, whether it’s for pure fun or there’s some remote work built into your trip, at some point you’re going to need a break from your holiday.

It’s ridiculously fun to be travelling or living in a foreign place. If you’re anything like me, you spend every second of the day running around trying to soak up everything you can. Sleep? Why? There’s more to see and do and eat and drink and people to meet and fun to be had. But the problem is that within this said fun being had I bet you’re not really sleeping, doing traditional exercise or eating any kind of balanced meal (gin and cucumber does not count towards your daily veggie intake).

So aside from not really living a healthy lifestyle, your adrenals are also bombarded with new and exciting places, people and food. Plus, your mind is continuously working on overdrive to figure out what to do, where to go and how to make it all happen right now. This all takes a lot of energy. It’s a fun kind of energy, but at some point, that becomes exhausting.

Everyone’s threshold is different, if you know me, you know I have a crazy amount of energy, but even I hit a wall a few times in the past months where I had no choice but to take a break from my time away. You need a day, or dare I suggest two days, where you sleep in, go to a somewhere you already know for food, nap and have some time off.

I call these days my re-set days. Depending on how long you are away for and how often you change locations this can mean different things.

 

Holiday from your travels 2_On The Go_On The List Melbourne

 

I’ve had two re-set days that have really stood out to me this trip so far. The first one came my first full day in Lisbon. I had been travelling Morocco and the Sahara, and for three nights in a row, I had less than four hours sleep, so it was time for a reset. I woke up and had no choice (my body carked it) I had to go back to sleep, I went to lunch at the café next door to where I was staying, then I went back to bed for a snooze and then to the beach to continue my naps. At the time I was annoyed I wasn’t out exploring this new city and doing all the things. But I think it taught me about the necessity of these re-set days (or maybe we can call them ‘weekends from your holiday’). After that day I recharged and went out and did a hundred things a day again, but it wouldn’t have been possible without that day off.

There is another type of re-set too and this one I experienced the first day I returned to NYC after Morocco and Portugal, this one is more of a personal re-set day. Just normal boring things you do at home. I needed to get my eyebrows waxed, I was in desperate need of a mani-pedi, and I had some boring washing to do. I also had hundreds of emails to clear. This is not typically stuff you think about doing while on vacay, but when you’re remote for a while, these days are the boring meat in your fun sandwich.

It’s annoying to take time off, so the only other way I see to avoid it is to get proper exercise in, sleep lots more, drink loads of water, eat a balanced meal, then buy a plane ticket home and go and live your normal life and never go travelling, the end. Or, just take a day every now and again guys, no biggie!

NOTE: A day after writing this article I got pretty sick (flu type of thing) and had to really take a few days off which annoyed the hell out of me, but I had no choice. Listen to your body people!

 

PICS SHOT BY DAN LIVINGSTON  if you’re heading to Portugal I recommend tee-ing up a shoot with him!

 

Come On The Go with me by following daily stories at Candy Hertz and On The List Melb Insta pages.