As I near a five year anniversary with my current company, I’ve come to the rather wretched realization that I simply don’t know how to be on vacation. When I’ve actually taken time off in the past it’s been for a day or two at a time. Even then I continue to live and die by email and cell phone.

To put this into perspective, some time ago I spent several days in the hospital. The nursing staff scolded me for my continual cell phone and notebook computer usage. I went so far as to disassemble the phone in my room to get an analog dial-in line for email and VPN. I’ve been keeping that sort of pace for nearly a decade.

Faced with a huge bundle of accrued vacation days I booked July 4th through the 13th off — eight back-to-back business days; a full 12 days away from the office. With all most enough of my workload transferred to other people on my team I raced out the door last Wednesday evening with a strong resolve to do nothing.

So far, so good: I’ve checked email only a handful of times and have received just three work-related calls. I actually left the house yesterday without my cell phone, which is probably the first time that has happened since the late 1990’s. For the most part I’ve been successful at escaping whatever the day’s emergency happens to be.

On Monday my plan nearly swerved into the ditch as one of my Washington ITS team members resigned. I sent a couple of emails detailing final tasks, transition duties, and HR information. Surprisingly, I’ve since been able to keep the entire issue out of mind and have continued to focus on nothing. I cannot overstate how much of an achievement this is. As recently as a couple of months ago I would have canceled vacation altogether and abruptly headed off to DC.

Of course, I’m a few days in and beginning to feel restless. It probably isn’t a good sign that I’m writing an entry about the subject I’m convincing myself to ignore. Regardless, I’ve got to get my work ethic back in order and try desperately to achieve nothing.