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Even Artists Need Vacations
Everyone needs to rest, relax, and recuperate.
Many people think that the life of an artist is a cakewalk. They think that, as an artist, you’re doing what you love and getting paid. How can that possibly tire you out like normal work does?
Believe me, it does. Creative work and being an artist is a wonderful thing. But even artists need vacations. That’s because doing the work you love is still work. Work, even work you love, takes a toll on you mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
As you’re reading this, I’m currently on my annual vacation. This involves decadent camping with nearly 10,000 other geeks doing medieval reenactment activities. My group’s camp includes heated water showers, an extensive kitchen, and always-filled drink coolers, both alcoholic and not. We also have a ginormous shaded common area where we can sit and talk, play games, and chill with each other.
Maybe that’s not your idea of a vacation, but this annual event always serves me as a good and healthy reset.
It’s all about maintaining your health, wellness, and wellbeing
Even when your work is something you love, you need to take breaks. A lunch break, multiple fifteen-minute breaks, PTO days, and weekends are seldom enough for anyone. People need to have time for themselves, their families, and away from the stress, expectations, and other common elements of work.
Even artists have stressors. Deadlines, the business side of creating art, expectations from fans, and other things come up that impact your health, wellness, and wellbeing. Hence, even artists need vacations.
Health, wellness, and wellbeing are made of 4 elements. This is true for every single human being on Planet Earth. They are physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Most of our attention tends to focus on the physical. However, ignoring mental, emotional, and spiritual health, wellness, and wellbeing has consequences.
Nobody is only a physical body. Everyone has thoughts and mental health, feelings and emotional health, beliefs/values/morality and spiritual health. Ignoring any one of these can cause distress and make you sick. That’s why even artists, who do what we love for a living, need vacations.
Vacations are a reset point
I’ve never met anyone who can be constantly on, always on the go, and in motion all the time. Everyone I know needs to rest in one form or another.
Vacations are a time when you’re not working, your obligations are (hopefully) mostly chosen and decided on by you, and you get to step back from stressors. Or at least stressors that come from work.
Working, even at something you love, takes a toll. You find yourself in a position of needing to do “X”, “Y”, “Z” to make money so that you can have basics and more than basics. That’s stressful, even when you do what you love and/or love what you do.
Vacations are a break that provides you with a reset point. More time to breathe, to hit pause, and to address the four elements of your health, wellness, and wellbeing. What that looks like is as variable as you, me, and everyone else on the planet are from one another.
Some vacations have a limited appeal
My wife abhors camping. That’s because, frankly, she’s an indoor cat. Being out in the heat and sun is as unappealing to her as working in a cubicle farm office setting is to me. She went with me on this vacation. Once. And she despised it.
And that’s okay. We take our vacations both together and separately, taking what time we need to address our collective and individual health, wellness, and wellbeing. It might not be the norm when it comes to other married couples, but it’s perfect for us.
Some vacations have a limited appeal. What I might love, you might not, and vice versa. There’s nothing wrong with that. But taking a vacation is something that is good and healthy on multiple levels.
Yes, I recognize that, in the face of a world going mad, this might look selfish. But to keep resisting that madness, sometimes you need a breather to reset. You can only give so much, and the emptier your cup becomes, the less you have to give.
Even artists need vacations. That’s because everyone needs to rest, relax, and recuperate, if and when they can. Unless my vacation is somehow hurting or harming others, it’s not selfish; it’s self-care.
Thanks for reading. As I share my creative journey with you every week, please consider this: How are you inspired and empowered to be your own creator, whatever form that takes?
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