Recovery

A few weeks ago I went off to the woods to spend time alone. I do this every year during Michigan's deer season. It's sort of about hunting, but it's more about resting and resetting my brain. It really only takes two days, and then I'm quite recovered from anything that may have happened in my life in the last year. At the end of the third day I'm feeling lonely. By the end of the fourth day I'm desperate to return to my wife and kids. Some guys go to Vegas with their buddies or on a fishing trip to Canada or rock climbing with friends. We all recharge in our own way, being alone in the woods is mine. I'm very grateful that my wife understands and encourages this. I return calm, serene and ready to be the ultimate zen dad.

Sunset over the lake. Day 1, calming. Day 4, tears.

It never lasts. By noon on the second day after my return I'm as tired and haggard as I was the day before I left. Four days of vacation got me two days of peace, two days of loneliness and just over one day of fully rested parenting. Why bother? If you look at the schedule, it looks like I need a three day 'work week' and a four day weekend all by myself. Instead I get a 361 days of work and four days of weekend. This seems sub-optimal and perhaps a nice recipe for insanity. I think the whole point of this yearly exercise, for me, is that it's important to know that recovery is possible. No matter how my day has gone, I'm only 4 days of time from desperately missing these maddening little people. Some days it feels like this job of parenting will never end. Arguing children and endless streams of dishes and laundry extending to infinity. These four days let me know, every year, that it will end, and when it does, I will miss it dearly.