Time out

When TravelMole blogger Helena Beard took a few months off work, she wasn’t sure how it would go, but in fact it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened…

"After nearly 20 years of working five days a week, recently I found myself in the great position of being able to have a few months off. And what a revelation that turned out to be.

I’ve always considered myself to be someone who wouldn’t do well without work. I thought work defined me, gave me my self-confidence, delivered my social life, underpinned my whole reason for being and got me out of bed in the morning. As it turns out, I was wrong. As it turns out, there’s more to me (thank god). As it also turns out, I am the envy of most of my peers.

‘Ooh, I’d love a few months off’ they’d say. ‘It must be wonderful to spend some time with the kids’, ‘I wish I could go travelling’. Some of them even started waxing lyrical about maternity leave they once took and what a wonderful time that was. Although those ones were clearly suffering from amnesia. Or something more serious.

So I got to thinking. Why is it so difficult to simply take a break from work? Should it be that, for most of us, things have to go wrong for us to have any kind of time off. Why should we have to go through redundancy, work hassles, illness or ‘I simply can’t do this one more day’ before we get a chance to regroup and a space to reflect. Isn’t there a better way? And would we not all be a lot more productive if we had the chance to step away from our jobs for a while in order to see them more clearly and, hopefully, appreciate them more?

The obvious half way house for this is the sabbatical. You don’t get time off, but you do get to go and do something different. The travel industry is not known for its adoption of this concept. I can safely say I have never in my entire career been offered a sabbatical. OK, I have seen unfortunate colleagues be ‘seconded’, usually to IT development projects (as they moved their belongings to the fourth floor, we’d hide behind our screens like Roman slaves cowering in the shadows of the Colosseum. ‘Take Sextus’ we’d cry, ‘He’s really good on Basecamp’). But a proper sabbatical? Never done one, seen one or even heard of one.

There are, of course, a few options if you just want a little bit of extra time off. If you work for Virgin, you can now take as much holiday as you like ‘as long as all your work is done’ (ay, there’s the rub) or for parents of young kids there’s the six weeks’ parental leave (never heard of anyone having the guts to take that either). I guess you could go off sick with a stress-related illness if you have either a) a stress-related illness or b) no conscience and a malleable GP. But for most of us, we just have to keep going. Until either something goes wrong (see above), we have a baby, we retire, or we die (which probably comes under something going wrong, to be fair).

It is a powerful thing, some time to yourself. It allows you to reconnect, not just with your family, friends and TV box sets, but also with yourself. At the risk of sounding a bit ‘Brighton’ (not my fault – I live here), having some time off has stripped a layer from my personality. All the bits associated with work. Some good, some not so good. But it’s OK. I quite like myself like this. Is this the real me? Or is the working one the real me? It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that it’s good for me to have a change for a while.

Change is a positive thing. It builds energy, creativity, passion. But we work in an industry which we love and which we find hard to leave. So, unless we move away from it for a bit, how are we going to learn what lies beyond? I understand that, financially, few people can just chuck in their jobs. And, from a business perspective, especially a small business, it is difficult for companies to allow extended periods of leave. But I do believe that travel businesses should seriously consider more sabbaticals, job swaps, secondments (voluntary ones), and, where possible, protected career breaks. I think the benefit would be felt, not just by the workers, but by the industry as a whole."

Helena Beard is a marketing and brand specialist and co-owner of China Travel Outbound, a representation and PR agency working in the Chinese market.