I returned to work on Monday, January 23. Though I won’t know for awhile how this really worked out for clients (i.e.,whether or not I lost any), I know it was a good idea for me to be closed for a month. I got a lot of questions from people wondering what I was doing, being shut down for an extended period. I appreciate the understanding of my clients while I was “away,” and I certainly understand the curiosity and envy of those who are trying to get it.

What did I do? Just tried NOT to work, mainly! Although there were some odd jobs I had promised to do in advance of the closure, and also a few that trickled in that I just took care of rather than letting them sit, it was a time to spend with family, do a little traveling, cook some really good meals, start a writing project, knit some baby things, get in a little more exercise and, sleep in later many mornings! I felt absolutely zero guilt about my absence.

And why did I do it? Was I over-stressed or sick? Not at all. About a year earlier, my husband and I discussed the rather abstract (to us) concept of retirement. Having worked in a large school district for many years, I once had the idea that you work until a certain age and then you just stopped.

Though many people work later and later in their lives now either due to financial need or just because they enjoy it, those of us who are self-employed view retirement as a near-impossible dream. Not only that, even if you make a good living and plan well for retirement, how do you actually get from here to there?

After that preliminary conversation with Don, I started trying to think creatively about the transition that retirement actually is… wondering if it would be possible to do it by just taking more holiday time, very gradually (like a month or two or three) across the course of the coming years. Could you then eventually end up retired? That is, would your client list just gradually diminish along with your working days until you were not working any more at all?

This is what I may have started doing with my month long retreat from the work force. Or I may find I have unwittingly escalated some kind of client revolt, leaving me with not enough work to sustain me. All I know today is that I sustained my own need to step back from it all for a period of time, for rest and reflection.

As a result I feel nenewed and committed to finding time, even during the work week, for the things I love in life besides my business (which I love as well!). Thrice this week, the first back at the grindstone, people have asked if I were retired (not yet) and/or if I had lost weight (no, I wish!). Either I am looking older these days (carrying my knitting bag with me everywhere I go coupled with gray hair and wrinkles might exascerbate that perception) or a month off made me look relaxed and content, which I certainly am!!

Now - if I just can get that book written that I started while on hiatus! If so, I can simply tell people I took a month off in order to write a book.