Vacation

 I am on vacation (or holiday) for 2 weeks in the States.  After a few "issues" with my own family in Chicago before I left the UK, Mike and I decided that we would spend the whole 2 weeks in Michigan with his family.  I was apprehensive at first - last time we stayed with his parents was exactly one year ago when we were preparing for our big overseas adventure.  At that time things were stressful, Mike had a drunken accident, and we were all about to kill each other.

This time things are quite chill.  Mike has been gone for a year and so his family is just happy to have him home.  For the past week we have done nothing more than run, cook, read, and watch as much Bravo tv as we can (you know you LOVE the Real Housewives Franchise just as much as I do).  For the first time in a long time I am actually learning to relax...to a point.

It's funny - the more relaxed I get the more I feel like I should be doing work.  I check my email expecting something from work to pop up or anticipating reading a new article or policy that is related to my research.  I told my boss that for the 2 weeks I was off I would be OFF - no emails, no texting, no asking me to do something as I wanted to have a real holiday.  Now that I have it I am finding it a little hard to actually fully enjoy the time off - it's sick!  I meet with my adviser on Friday to go over my dissertation and so although I did all of my prep for that meeting before I left Bristol and sent it to her I still feel like I should be reading/writing.

But, I am not and am trying to teach myself the art of time off.  I bitch about wanting a break but when I get them I don't know what to do with myself.  I ran a 5K race two days after arriving in the US and have been running consistently since then which is a good thing, been trying to see a few friends, and trying to catch up on some fun reading.  I guess that is what relaxing is?  Who knows.  But for now I know that I needed the time off to calm my mind and my body before the the next 10 months of writing, working and running commence.  Now the World Cup..USA, USA, USA...