Spending Time Away From Home

For much of my life I’ve spent a lot of time away from home, either studying or travelling on business.  Then illness and a change in job role meant a transition to working from home and rarely travelling and for 10 years I relished it. I loved that I got to spend more time with Debbie and support her in her career, that I got to be there for the kids while they grew into wonderful young ladies and I got to fully invest in my fragile health. 

The kids are mostly grown up now though and have their own lives, Debbie has a full time job and I have time on my hands, travel is appealing again. Not the exhausting international business travel I used to do though, but an easy drive accompanied by a good audiobook to discover peace and variety.

Over the last two years I’ve travelled most months for between 4 days and a couple of weeks almost every month and I’ve mostly enjoyed it.  I sometimes get to take Debbie and/or some combination of the kids along but I’m often alone, which is just fine.  It’s rare that I get lonely when I’m alone, rather I fine it very relaxing and a great time for reflection, but when I do it just helps to solidify how grateful I am for my family and friends.

This year I’ve experimented with travelling every two weeks for a few days at a time and while I’ve enjoyed that too, I think it’s close to the tipping point. So I think next year I will scale back to travelling once a month, with a sprinkling of bi weekly trips saved for when I’m feeling particularly restless, in total perhaps fourteen four day breaks a year. 

Four day breaks seem to be ideal, they are long enough to be relaxing, cheap enough to be affordable, frequent enough to be diverting but not so long that I miss home too much.  After four days I come back refreshed and keen to get back into my normal routine, after 3 weeks of my routine though I’m itching for a change. 

The photo is of Filey’s northern cliff top path, with Scarborough in the far distance, I’m sitting in Esquire coffee in Scarborough as I write this and am about to drive down to Filey for the rest of the week..