Holiday plans - July 2025... (13.5.25)
Holiday plans - July 2025... (13.5.25)
An entirely personal note (nothing therapy related here) on planned break from my practice in July this year - with reduced hours also at end of June. I will make an update to website closer to the time.
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A few months ago, with unexpected time on my hands in the office, I got caught in a doom-scrolling loop going back through old work emails. I forget now what I was looking for in the first place, but after about thirty minutes on autopilot, I woke up with the sudden realisation it's been a lot of years since I've had any proper break from working...
Later on I gave this more thought, and calculated that the last time I had more than two weeks off with nothing-work-related-to-do-whatsoever was in 2001. At that time I was unemployed for a couple of months before starting a job. I think I also had 3 weeks in 2006, but I had three hard-going job interviews and a battery of aptitude tests, as well as negotiations. So although technically a break, it was entirely about work and nothing else. I can't categorise it as a holiday.
Otherwise, I've had nominal two-week breaks each year from 2008 to 2018. My banking jobs meant I had to take 'block leave' - an enforced two week break from physically being in the office. As work involved either trading or running electronic trading systems, block leave was mandatory to stop rogue trading (e.g. 'Nick Leeson / Barings Bank') where a trader bets hundreds of millions in secret. The idea was that if you were hiding trading losses, a two week break would flush this out through the accountancy systems in your absence. So a two week break is a kind of firewall and protection for the bank, and compulsory for front office staff.
The reality was different. At a certain level of responsibility the two week break wasn't observed. Yes, you'd be out of the office, but routinely having to field calls and meetings, still involved in whatever work was being done or doing the politics. It's just done remotely on a phone. Does it count, I wonder? There wasn't a single one of these block leaves that was a genuine two-week break, and it seemed various crises were saved up for the exact moment my leave began! Whether home or abroad I worked during all of them for at least some of the time. And I thought about it all far more than I wish I had.
While not certain, I'm fairly sure I haven't actually had a full week without work since 2009. From 2014 onwards, work commitments became intense, as this was the start of combining therapy work alongside banking until my retirement in 2018. I was in quite a senior position at the bank; the kind of job you could politely and fairly describe as 'all-consuming'. I'd balance this with therapy sessions, emergencies, training, and supervision. The days were long. I'd be up and out at 5.30/6am, and usually home no earlier than 7pm to 10pm, often later.
Thinking back, I remember one day of training in particular as being emblematic of this strange life. One of my training colleagues was giving a very earnest seminar on 'self care'. My phone was blowing up in my pocket, a surefire sign that something had gone wrong at work. Eventually I decided to nip to the loo to check, and sure enough my flagship project - the most important project at the time for the whole group, with a budget of many tens of millions - had hit serious difficulties. In the stairwell I had to log on to an emergency online call with about 30 people, heads of technology, senior consultants from Accenture and Deloitte, half of the mysterious Italian "research and development team", and half a dozen other Managing Directors of various countries, all waiting for me (and some of them keen to see me fall flat on my face). On the spin I had to make decisions, drop off to return for the crescendo of the seminar (which had now moved to suggestions such as lighting candles and running hot baths), before excusing myself, and dialling back in for another five minutes as the crisis continued. Dropping off again, having dodged the knives that were out for me, I squeezed in a 'therapy training' session (where you simulate a therapy session) where my 'client' was lamenting being far too busy with all the dreadful pressure she was feeling about writing a course essay. Wild times. And a bit lonely, even amongst friends.
For two years, once or twice a week, after a day in the city, I'd take the tube and Docklands Light Railway to East Ham. I'd walk a mile down the high street in the evening, sticking out like a sore thumb in my suit, to a ramshackle Church community building where I worked for a charity (a part of training). I loved it, but more than once I had to dodge some trouble (spoiler - best not to wear a watch, and best to wear shoes you can run in). After an evening of counselling, I'd do the whole thing in reverse and arrive home after midnight.
That was the routine for a few years, five days a week, with therapy work in evenings and on Saturday mornings too. Many weekends were given over to training, including lots of travel. With others I founded a coaching company in London around this time and managed to roll that forward to a successful start. There were some other complicating projects and responsibilities too.
At the time it felt normal. I don't recall mentioning it much (maybe those around me would say differently!). But honestly, knowing what was involved, I have no idea how it all got done. Family life was juggled around this, which certainly comes with a share of deep gratitude and plenty of regrets.
The upshot. For the last ten years, I haven't managed a single week of holiday without at least one, and more likely several, scheduled appointments. In practice, of course, this means holiday plans have to be fitted around appointments, e.g. You can't head out on a spontaneous family trip, or order a beer with lunch etc, if you have to be online/in the office at 11am and 5pm. This of course impacts others too, and I know I've been very selfish over the years. I usually try to take two or three five-day holidays per year, one of which is always around Christmas as most people are away. Other breaks are a couple of days here or there to build in longer weekends and generate more of a half-week.
This, if it's not obvious, is a shortcoming of mine and a confession. And it's entirely on me - who the hell else is there to blame! If I wanted to be positive about myself then at least it's reflective of a high commitment to my work and a high work ethic (which is true), but in reality it has elements of people-pleasing; a need to feel of 'value', a difficulty being assertive enough to keep a boundary around my own need for breaks and to organize myself accordingly.
Somewhere in the middle of these two explanatory models - I think I'd been at 'workaholic' levels of activity from 2010-19, really by any standard, combining difficult jobs under pressure for half of that time. This skewed my own appetite and capacity for work, and also my sense of what ought to be possible in the available time. As I find therapy work very meaningful, I leaned into this 'skew' and took on commitments without much thought for breaks. Certainly, once retired from banking, I expanded my therapy work straight away with the same energy I'd approached the years before, without always thinking about longer-term impacts. I retired from banking on one Friday. I was a full-time therapist on Monday morning with a full roster of clients. I doubt I took the weekend off.
My wonderful supervisor sometimes tries to point some of this out in an encouraging way, suggesting I slow down!
Well... he's quite right. But even though he's right, I love my job, I like being busy and I'm hoping I stay that way. I can't see that desire ever changing. But I agree a decent break is necessary.
I've spoken already to most regular clients about being away in July. It looks like I will be on limited hours in the final week of June, and physically out of the country (in Spain) for the whole of July. I will be back in Shoreham and seeing people from the start of August. I will make prospective new clients aware of the break and suggest a 'therapy start' in August or September, should they wish to work with me.
I'll likely struggle with having time on my hands and will probably have some feelings of boredom that I detest. I hope so, because that'll be a good thing for me. I'll miss seeing people, even it its for just a few weeks. But this version of 'block leave' should help flush out the elements of tiredness or middle-aged disorganisation that have crept into my work in the last three years that I'm not too happy about! I've made one too many small errors (another one today) - calendar inputs gone wrong, emails left too long in the inbox when meaning to 'return to them later' and so on.
Although exact dates are TBD, in July I'm very, very happy to see current clients who would like to see me probably in the third week of the month (14th-18th). I will try to be disciplined about the time window and ask for your understanding! This would be online (WhatsApp Vid, Teams). For those who are comfortable with a planned break for four/five weeks, we would meet again in August.
Wishing all readers a wonderful start to the summer.
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