Learning How to be Idle on Vacation

In reply to Learning How to be Idle on Vacation by Peter Rukavina Your post resonates a lot, Peter. In my journey of the last years overcoming burn-out my inability to rest, other than sleep, stands out. There’s always things to do, work, at home. Simultaneously so much time ticks by procrastinating as well, the pretence of activity. Not a rest, but then used to tell myself that I already took time off. There’s also the echo of the deep past where if I did nothing it was not the dolce far niente, a sweet idleness, the Italians hold up as ideal, but something I’ve come to call amaro far niente, a bitter idleness, which has its own lures even if unhealthy in the end. I’ve come to avoid it, but have to relearn it. Work to do …. or rather rest to take. The lifestyle, which I lived for more than 25 years, had great benefits. It also rendered me unused to the idea of a vacation with idle time: on the working road all the idle moments got swept up in escape to the work bunker, so the days…