How To Overcome A Vacation Hangover in Five Steps

What to do when your routine is out of whack

Jul 26, 2024

What a week! I scheduled my weekly newsletter last week and promptly left the country—I was actually in the air somewhere over Idaho when the newsletter dropped into inboxes—so I never looked at the engagement. Now that I’m home, I know I need to get back to my habits, my routines.

But how?

Coming back from vacation is challenging. There’s the suitcase full of laundry, the empty refrigerator, and the pile of mail and unread/ignored emails. This time, I had the additional chaos of returning to my job the morning after a late-night return. And now that my job has been condensed into only one day each week, I suffered a vacation hangover on Wednesday (which was also my Monday AND Friday, all in one). Gah!

So, my real job pushed my return to writing out one more day. And here is what I learned.

STEP ONE: Don’t allow the panic to simmer

Start somewhere. For me, I figured I’d jump right into my newsletter. Nope. I was stuck with what to share. I went back to look at what I saved and what I liked in the last week and found very little. Not because there was little to save or like. I just hadn’t spent much time on Substack all week. I was behind on the serials I’ve been following. I hadn’t opened a single newsletter from my various subscriptions.1 I’d only sporadically perused Notes. My normal source of inspiration was lacking.

Needless to say, I stared at the blank template for a l o n g time. Once I had a general direction decided, it was too late to complete and send this week’s newsletter by my self-prescribed weekly deadline.

Shattered
In the remnants of the Pacific Northwest, 110 years in the future, fourteen-year-old Tessa Wright's idyllic life in the Wilds is disrupted by the death of her family, forcing her to move to the capital city of Bannock. Struggling with grief and adjusting to public school for the first time, she becomes haunted by fragmented memories about her past, revealing clues that suggest her family’s death was no accident.
As she grapples with these revelations, she’s drawn into a much larger conflict—one that threatens to change the course of her life and the future of her world. Amid rising tensions between the urban centers and the Wilds, the growing Underground movement threatens to expose dangerous secrets that could challenge the oppressive Ryker administration, changing everything.
As she unravels the truth, Tessa must confront her identity, decide whom to trust, and weigh the risks of fighting for justice. In a fractured and unstable society, time is running out for Tessa to reclaim her true self. In a world where nothing is as it seems, discovering the truth could cost her everything.

Instead of panicking, I pushed the stress of not writing to the back of my mind. In fact, I’d done the same thing all week. Being in vacation-mode—you know, that mentality where the space-time continuum has distorted so much that you have no idea what time zone you are in or what day the rest of the world is living—well, it meant that my attempts to engage with readers and writers were severely lacking.

Sure, I attempted to keep up with the daily Microdosing with

Miguel S.

and failed miserably. I managed to get July 18th’s prompt posted, then missed all of the rest! I’d commented about missing the “COFFEE” prompt intentionally because I’m a tea drinker. And he promised to get a “TEA” prompt out soon. Idle threat, no doubt. Right? I was positive it would take a month or more to see the word in his daily prompt.

STEP TWO: Reach out to a friend

Welp! I came across the “TEA” prompt on Thursday. I was already berating myself for not getting my weekly newsletter sent, and here I was getting a shout-out from a fellow writer I respected. There was no way I couldn’t complete the prompt when I knew the word choice was specially selected because of my comment.

I figured if my newsletter was going nowhere fast, I might as well rely on my writer friends to give me direction! So, challenge accepted, I set my music to relaxing piano instrumentals and opened my Microdosing document. And I did it! I caught up! Here, Here, Here, Here, and Here.2

This post is public, so feel free to share it. Someone in your community will find value in my words too.

STEP THREE: Up the ante

I’ve heard multiple writers claim that they feel like they are writing to the void. The theme is common in Notes and newsletters. Take

Alina Barbu

’s post from March 2024.

I have been writing to the Void for so long, that even if nobody liked what I write I would still potter around in solitude.
It is exhilarating though, the thought, that somebody might actually like what I write.

Minimal engagement. Lack of likes, shares, comments. And yet, we all keep writing. (Or try to …) Oh, but that dopamine hit when you see a notification! It’s addicting, for sure. And how about a comment IRL? Well, that requires that we tell the people in our real life that we are writers!

Let me know what you think of my work. Share with your community. Recommend me to your followers. Leave a comment.

My subscribers include my mother (my first subscriber), a cousin (my first pledger—only because when I walked my mom through the subscription process, I told her to skip the pledge), a niece, and my college roommate’s husband (also a good friend of mine). And joining my subscriber list this week?My editor! (Welcome, Kate!) So, I feel the pressure of people who know me reading my words.

Don’t get me wrong, the pressure is not bad. But like I tell the people who come to my fitness classes—come with a friend. Someone who gives you the side-eye when you try to flake out and skip a workout. Having an accountability partner does wonders for improved dedication and follow-through.

STEP FOUR: Big Breathe In and Out.

Sure, your accountability partner is gonna call you out on your absence. But they are also going to cheer you on. The biggest issue is likely not being able to cheer for yourself.

Take a deep breath and allow yourself the grace to change your routine. Life happens, right? And sometimes, you just need to have a little patience.

I have to remind myself this often: fighting through something may not be the only way. I recently attempted to upload some files via an FTP server, but the connection was somehow broken. I tried to connect about a dozen times before contacting IT support.

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."3

It’s easy to keep butting your head against the wall. You think you will be able to break through. But what if we did what

Robin Cangie (she/her)

suggests? Ask the resistance why it’s there and find a way around the obstacle.

Hey, look at that, my newsletter name selection fits this suggestion …

STEP FIVE: When in doubt, walk in a circle

My last suggestion to overcome your vacation hangover is simple. Even the main character in my upcoming novel with Provender Press lives by this advice.

When you get stuck, walk in a circle, and look from a different angle.

How could I look at this from a different angle?

I stepped away from the newsletter I started, and when I returned a couple of hours later (sleep helps!) I noticed that my initial attempt did not track with my intentions. I scraped most (not quite all) of what I started yesterday and found the points I wanted to make all along. I just had to look from a different angle to see them hiding in the fog of my vacation-addled mind.

In case you wanted to know more about what prompted this excursion into my process, here you go!

Vacation-Mode Activated

When our kiddo said he was accepted into a Fulbright-Hayes summer program and wouldn’t be home for the summer, my hubby and I decided that the only way we’d be able to see him was to go to where he was … it was a sacrifice. But we did it!

pictures of food, sunsets, vistas, and sights in Costa Rica — Some highlights of our visit to Costa Rica

We had a blast with our kid. (I really hope the video of our karaoke never reaches the internet!) We loved all we did and saw during our short visit. It was the first vacation since writing my novel that I did not take my computer with me and sneak in a few minutes here and there with writing and editing. Which is likely why I was feeling the panic set in upon our return.

But the downtime was needed. My cup has been refilled.

NEXT STEPS

Newsletter done. Next up, a dedicated hour to a job search. Then, back to the manuscript!

Questions for you. (Come on, give me that dopamine hit and interact with this newsletter!)

What is the first thing you do when you return from a trip? Do you empty your suitcase immediately or take just what you need out until it is finally empty?
What is the hardest re-adjustment to real life for you after a vacation?
How many landscape photos (where you or your travel companion is not in the photo) did you take on your last vacation? Be honest. My count was 119 out of 310 photos/videos.
Do you have any daily habits? Share with me!
Give me your favorite quote (and who said it first … if you can verify it)
Other than yourself, who was the last person you had to give a pep talk and why? Did you have any sage wisdom to share?