Fast Forward to Rewind…

This weekend I found myself faced with a quite literal real-time rarity on my blackberry - settled on a Sunday afternoon with the unexpected utopia of untarnished, untouched, unallocated time. For someone who is stereotypically always on the go, time is the one thing there never seems to be enough of, so the apparition of a multitude of miraculous minutes was like an immaculate conception along the long route of the proverbial Holy Grail. Ironically, however, finding this free time was in fact more time consuming than not having it at all….

My conundrum was further compounded by the fact that the sudden apparition of the said free time had controversially presented itself at the end of my just completed me-time. Having just finished a long-awaited long weekend break I should, in theory, be feeling more inspired than tired. However, as I reflected on what I actually had had to do in order to be able not to do, I realised how much time I had actually invested in my pursuit to find time to get rested.

In true chicken and egg theory, for every 1 day of holiday there are at least 2 previous working days needed to catch up on things that would be done if you were not going to be away.

Following the logic, my 4 day break had in fact already chalked up a 64 hour time-stake.

Add to this vacation equation the hours needed for pre-departure preparation, a quota of a rota left almost always to the last-minute of the most precious midnight minutes the night before the get-away, 'Day One' of time-off is most likely lost to nodding off.

So, with my 4 days off now mathematically having only 3 days left, the race to use the free diary space suddenly has to pick up pace. In my attempt at non-working, however, I had forgotten to schedule the time required for the social net-working - reading book replaced with facebook, the holiday postcard has become a daily post on a wall board and, as I complete my own daily update on my latest status, I wonder if today's retreat requires time to re-tweet in order to be truly complete, is it really possible to have a vacation that includes relaxation or is there really such a thing as ‘free’ time?

Caught up in a life on the go, it seems we sometimes lose the ability to stop. Faced with an eternally packed itinerary during up time and down time I wonder....does the reality of time off from a busy schedule mean that we have to fast forward in order to rewind to be able to unwind or have are we in fact responsible for making ourselves so busy with a self-fuelling diary it has actually become a self fulfilling prophecy?

‘Til next time, Pandora