Before I can get excited about going on vacation, I have to get organized.
I know that sounds like it should be the other way around. You book the trip, get excited, and then, closer to the date, you figure out the details. For some people, that works just fine. For me, the excitement doesn’t come until the list is made.
I have a pad I bought on Amazon, one of those pastel-colored flip pads with sections for each day of the week. Little boxes. Lines. Very satisfying to look at when it’s full and even more satisfying when things start getting crossed off. I didn’t buy it for vacations, but it has become my vacation command center. I cross out the day labels at the top and write the trip name instead. Then each section becomes a category: travel plans, things for the house, activities to book, the cats, the garden, the mail. Everything that lives in my head has a place to go on paper.
That’s the thing about a big trip. Whether you’re driving to the beach for a week with your family or flying across an ocean, the mental load before you leave is real. The logistics of leaving your home, your animals, your routines, the things you tend to without even thinking about it that don’t just take care of themselves. Someone has to take care of all of it. And in most households, you already know who that someone is.
What the list does for me is take the overwhelm and make it workable. Instead of walking around with a vague, anxious feeling that I’m going to forget something important, I can sit down for 45 minutes, go through my sections, and accomplish something. The worry has a place to land. Once it’s written down, I don’t have to carry it in my head anymore.
Here is what I’ve noticed, and I think this is true for a lot of women: I cannot give myself permission to feel excited about a trip until I feel prepared for it. I don’t have to be perfectly prepared. Just prepared enough. The excitement is waiting on the other side of the list.
There’s also something I’d like to mention about the two kinds of trips, because they really do feel different. A car trip, especially with family, has a more forgiving energy. You can throw things in the trunk as you remember them. You can turn around if you forgot something. The trip itself starts in the driveway. A flight somewhere, especially a long one, is a different animal. There’s a hard deadline. There are airport logistics, security, connections, and hours in the air where you cannot do anything about anything you forgot. The list for that kind of trip isn’t just helpful. It’s how I sleep at night in the weeks before I go.
And then there’s the guilt. I don’t hear women talk about it much, but I know it’s there.
I didn’t grow up taking vacations. Where I came from, a big summer meant a long weekend at the beach, maybe four days if we were lucky. Sometimes a drive to see family, which was more of a visit than a vacation. That was common for a lot of people I knew growing up, and I think it shaped my idea and perception of taking vacations. Even now, when I’m planning a real trip, somewhere lovely, somewhere that takes planning and flights and expense, there’s a voice that says, is this really okay? Do I really get to do this?
There’s guilt about the money. There’s guilt about the animals, as if they will feel abandoned rather than simply cared for by someone else for a week. There’s guilt about leaving the house, the irrational but very real fear that something will happen while you’re gone that you could have prevented if you’d stayed. And underneath all of it is something older, a sense that a vacation is a luxury, and luxuries have to be earned, and maybe I haven’t earned it.
I think a lot of women carry that in some way, on some level, maybe not exactly like I do. We plan the trip, we do the work, and we still feel like we need to justify going.
Even when I’ve checked all the boxes on my handy dandy pad, and I know the cats are taken care of, and the mail is handled, and I’ve checked everything twice, there is still a moment when I close the door and feel the trepidation of leaving. I think that’s just part of loving the life you’ve built. You’re not running away from it. You’re stepping away from it for a little while, and that feels a little uncomfortable.
Can we talk honestly about arriving on vacation for a moment? I think we romanticize arrival more than we should. Depending on the trip and who you’re with, the work doesn’t always stop when you get there. A week at the beach with family is a different kind of work, but someone is still thinking about meals, who is handling breakfast, and whether the kids have sunscreen. An international trip means someone is checking the train times, confirming the tickets, and keeping track of what everyone is doing that day. The master list doesn’t always stay home. Sometimes it just changes form.
The real rest, the kind that restores something, comes a day or two in. When the processors in your brain start to slow down. When you look at the water or the mountains or a street you’ve never walked before, and you take a breath that feels genuinely different. Different air. Different food. Different pace. A version of yourself that isn’t managing anything for a few hours.
That is the moment that makes it all worth it. The list, the guilt, the trepidation at the door. You get there, and at some point you look up, and you’re just somewhere else. Fully.
That’s what I’m planning toward. And if you’re in the middle of your own list right now, that moment is waiting for you too.
Talk to you next Monday, Meryl
