No, I don’t mean checking out in that final, get-your-affairs-in-order kind of way. I mean checking out in a mental, don’t-even-think-of-asking-me-anything kind of way. That’s what I did this past week.

And it felt goooooooood.

It’s quite amazing to me, actually. I’m a bit of a workaholic. I bust my ass all year long. On the weekends, I’m constantly on the move, trying to scratch off as many things on my to-do list as possible. By Sunday night, I’m exhausted. Rather than feeling renewed and ready to start another week, I’m spent and tired and need more time to recoup. This is a bad way to live. It’s like trying to go up on a down escalator. You climb and climb and you just can’t seem to reach the top. And you get so tired of climbing, that you end up sliding backward. You never catch up.

(My usual analogy is that I feel like a hamster on a wheel. I just keep running and running and getting nowhere. But that’s a whole other conversation.)

For someone like me, you’d think it would be a challenge to let go of work. To avoid checking emails or making phone calls. To go do fun things and not constantly think about all the tasks that need to be done.

Nope. Nopety-nope-nope. Not me. I completely checked out for four days. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as if I didn’t think about work at all, but those thoughts are usually fleeting. In fact, I have to force myself to occasionally check emails (something you simply have to do when you own a business). Maybe it’s because I hate my job and couldn’t care less if the whole fucking thing was sucked up into a black hole and disappeared forever. As for my business, I plan accordingly and make sure that things are covered. Ultimately, I trust my partners and believe that they will take care of business.

I’m back at work now and I’m trying really hard to maintain that peaceful state of mind. My job makes that very difficult, but I’m trying. In the meantime, I thought I’d share just a few photos of my fabulous trip to Montréal, Canada. Montréal est magnifique!