A week off sounds great. And my site and my facebook mention a week of holiday, a vacation. It does feel like that. Until a colleague I meet in an impromtu meeting looks at me and says ‘You did not take a week off, you reserved a week for other work than individual clients!’

Good point. I took a week ‘off’ to do work which requires uninterrupted time. Preparing classes for example, for nurses in training, to colleagues at  SBL (on how to read scientific papers, love the subject!), for  VBN volunteerd about Candida, for the ELACTAconference in Athens in May this year. I need to do the paperwork for classes I have already finished (less nice I must admit). And then there is the tax 2015 to be done, my website to spruce up, two books I want to and must read (The Fourth Trimester and De Melkfabriek). Oh and by the way my home can use a bit of TLC with spring coming. I mean, while I have a week off that should be possible shouldn’t it?

Uninterrupted time is precious. Let’s face it, when someone calls with painfull nipples or a crying baby or a mastitis or faltering growth it’s no contest: women and children first. Even my accountant has caught up on this. Would I please put my phone on silent until I have given him the data he is waiting for. Yes he understands that I saw a couple of mothers in the time since his first (and second and quite likely third) email but now the taxpeople really will insist.

My collegue was right: this is no vacation. ‘Ah who cares what I call it’, I said but she objected to that too. Because after this week I will hopefully feel satisfied but not rested. No lazy mornings in bed, no clear head, no knitting done.

So what do I have this week? Time.
Time to work uninterruptedly on lovely other facets of my work that require more than the odd hour here and there. So that in the following weeks and months I can say ‘of course’ when a mother asks me to help her find a way to solve whatever she is running into while breastfeeding. So that I stand in front of groups well prepared and happy.

And my to do list now has an extra item: plan a vacation!