My Virtual Days at the Beach

I haven’t had enough vacation this summer. My week on the Cape just whetted my appetite for sunshine, sand, and seashells. But I also have a craving for food, housing, and a meaningful purpose in life. I don’t know of a better way of obtaining those things than my job at Dana-Farber, on the best team in the world. So I’ve had to find creative ways to juggle the two and to make compromises where necessary.

For instance, this weekend was the perfect beach weekend. But we had other plans that did not include the beach. So as I often do, I started my weekend by taking a turn through my “Woodland Walk”. This is a path through the wooded area in our backyard that started as a tangle of jewelweed and poison ivy, and which my husband cleared a few years ago. Over the years we have cut out a winding path, covered it with wood chips, put rocks around the edges, and cultivated native woodland plants. The path takes all of one minute to circumnavigate, but when I’m in there I feel like I’m in another world. Sometimes I’ll take a sandwich out to the little bench there and listen to the birds.

On nights when I have trouble falling asleep, I envision myself walking that path, one step at a time, passing the leaf pile and the tree trunk overturned during Hurricane Irene. I stop at the sculpture created from “found objects” I’ve dug up over the years—a rusty door handle, an ancient saw blade, a pair of child’s suspenders adorned with Sesame Street characters. I’m usually asleep before I’ve reached the end of the path.

Another way I extend my beach vacations is to spend time with the seashells we’ve collected. I clean and polish them with mineral oil and create wreaths, picture frames, and displays while listening to the music on my MP3 player that I take with me to the beach when collecting the shells. It’s remarkable how it takes me back to those special locations and happy times.

These virtual vacations still don’t take the place of actual vacations, but I don’t underestimate their value.

I had a little help with this from a presentation on “Moving from Stress to Resilience” at our monthly Brown Bag series in June. A representative from the Partners Employee Assistance Program offered tips on relaxation and mindfulness practices that you can incorporate into the middle of the work day. A walk to the Dana Building from my desk at Overland Street can become an exercise in meditation. Working on a status report, while not exactly a day at the beach, can be more pleasant when listening to “beachy” music on headphones. Taking a few deep breaths and running my fingers through the dish of kitten paw shells that I keep on my desk is a reminder that the natural world and the world of work are not so separate after all.