Washed Up: Notes from a Greek Island

I’ve never been very good at being on holiday.

That sounds like a lie. Weren’t you just on holiday for two months? Well, no – not exactly. I was travelling for two months. In very few moments over the course of the weeks I spent drifting around Europe, tracing winding streets and pathways both familiar and not, did I feel like I was on holiday. In very few moments, did I feel like I was resting.

Maybe, that was because most days began with the caveat that I would still have to clock into work in the mid-afternoon. Maybe, that was because I barely stopped for the eight weeks I was on the road; barely catching my breath in one location before I was onto the next. Maybe, that was because frankly, I didn’t want to be resting.

The original trip I planned out was seven weeks. Seven weeks of intense, back-to-back travel, and then return home to Toronto in time for the busy season at work to kick in. I stared at that plan for a while, musing absentmindedly on how tired I was going to be when I arrived back. Of how much I would be in need of rest.

So, I penciled in one more week – a holiday. An actual week off work for the first time in I don’t know how long, with no company or commitments. Just me and a small hotel near the beach on the island of Crete, in Greece. I’d swim, I’d read, I’d lie in the sun and snooze in the afternoon just because I could.

What I’d forgotten, of course, was that I’m not very good at stopping like that. I never have been. Maybe it’s genetic, maybe it’s a habit I picked up, but either way, I get it from my parents. Specifically, from my dad.

Most of our travel when I was young was also, very much, Not A Holiday. Whether by the canals of Venice or the South Atlantic sea in Uruguay, we were there for my dad’s work. And, in turn, I was on a cultural experience (or, at least, that’s how my mum phrased it whenever she wrote to the school to request my absence for a week at a time).

Not that it was a lie – I learned as much, if not more, from the many museums and historical landmarks that I would trawl through in the late mornings with my mum by my side as I would have in the confines of the classroom. Even our summers in Finland – the closet thing we got to A Holiday – were spent in pursuit of our various projects. My father sitting on the front porch of the sauna and writing his next academic book. My mother writing in her diary to the gentle sway of the swing. Myself, filling pages and pages of a ruled notebook with a story I would struggle to type up on my return home – as much from my illegible handwriting as from how atrocious my stories were at the time.

The concept of doing nothing does not come naturally to me. But in Crete, I found myself very much faced with just that. I walked down to the beach on my first evening, sinking my toes into the coarse sand and stared out over the horizon.

“Just relax,” I murmured to myself. Just saying the words seemed to have the opposite effect.

Faced with the prospect of nothing to do but to sit on this strip of sand and stare at the sea, I inevitably ended up planning out my days with activities. I took a boat trip out to the island on the horizon and dived into crystal blue waters and accidentally disturbed a few sea urchins. I navigated the baffling bus system to hitch a ride into Heraklion to visit ruins and let the sea spray by the harbour kiss my skin. I trekked sand into my room each day and left my swimsuit to dry on the balcony every night.

When I arrived home, I was exhausted – and yet, I was sated. I carried the warmth of the blisteringly hot days with me, ready to return to all the responsibilities I faced back in the big city. Maybe it wasn’t the most restful of holidays, maybe some people wouldn’t even call my week in Greece a holiday at all, but it had given me what I needed. It had filled the role a holiday was supposed to fill.

Even now that I’m back, rest is difficult concept for me to wrap my head around. During the working week, I frequently find myself in a routine of leaving the house early in the morning and not arriving home until late at night. By Saturday afternoon, in a post-spin, freshly-showered haze, I’m dozing off. But trying to institute a lazy Sunday doesn’t seem to work for me, instead leaving me listless and irritable by the evening and usually starting the new week on a restless night’s sleep.

I won’t always have the seemingly immense amount of energy I have at this time of my life to live like I do. For now, all I can be is grateful for everything it allows me to do, and make the most of it. And maybe, just maybe, try to get to bed a bit earlier.