I love the Northern Isles off the coast of Scotland. I’ve visited the Hebrides, the Shetlands Islands, the Faroes and Iceland. I’ve dreamt about visiting the Scottish Orkneys especially for the longest time. The Orkneys are a group of 70 islands at 59 degrees latitude, where the North Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean.
At the end of 2019, I booked a trip that would take me from Brussels to Kirkwall, the Orkneys’ main town, by train, bus and ferry. I was supposed to travel in May of 2020. I’m sure you can guess what happened next. Europe went into lockdown and for months after that, the continent’s yellow, orange and red zones changed colours as quickly as Scotland’s weather is fickle. It’s why I only dared to go on my dream trip earlier this month.
The Orkneys did not disappoint. There were beautiful sights everywhere I went, from rare seabirds to wide expanses and dramatic cliffs. And how rare is it to have a beach all to yourself these days?
Yet when people ask me how my vacation was, that’s not what I lead with. Instead, I almost immediately shout that I (almost) fully unplugged from work and thoroughly enjoyed it.
Because in the last seven years, my laptop has accompanied me on an impressive number of island and citytrips that I treated as working vacations. This time, however, I vowed to leave the thing at home. My backpack felt lighter and so did I.
I wish I could say that I was able to fully unplug because I discovered some hack that allows one to perfectly combine freelancing and going on a vacation, but that’s not what happened. I started working part-time in a salaried capacity at one of my regular clients at the start of the year (more on that in one of my next newsletters). Thanks to this part-time gig, I still got paid while I was on holiday and was able to turn an out-of-office message on that invited anyone who contacted me to get in touch with a colleague. I don’t think I need to explain how many worries this out-of-office eased.
As for my other freelance gigs, the ones that I spend half my work time on, it proved a bit harder to set an out-of-office as there was no one to temporarily cover for me in my absence. I solved this by completing assignments well ahead of time, alerting clients to my holiday dates and praying that no-one would contact me about some amazing assignment at the last minute.
My phone’s very weak signal on the Orkney Islands helped me stick to my plan. My travel companion and I navigated the islands with print maps and I let my phone battery run out. I was surprised how quickly I forgot about my life back home. I didn’t think about bills or my agenda; I didn’t even fret about all my plants possibly having died when I returned home.
When I turned on my phone, I did so to check in with my friends. It was in those moments, that I realised how difficult it is to fully unplug. Thanks to WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and voicemail, I was still confronted with work-related messages. Unfortunately, these apps don’t have out-of-office buttons – yet?
Thankfully, most of my clients didn’t contact me while I was on vacation. After we had sorted out the last few details, they wished me a good holiday and then got back in touch after my holiday. Except for one client. This client interpreted the email I sent them more than a week before my holiday – an email that mentioned my last working day – as an invitation to get in touch with me via WhatsApp. 😬
To go almost competely offline for 11 days isn’t exactly a radically bold experiment, or it shouldn’t be in any case. But this holiday nevertheless taught me a few things about myself and about my clients. That I want to shut off my laptop and phone more often, even if only for a weekend. That I have more energy at work when I’ve been able to completely disconnect from work for a little bit. That it is smart to try to stick to email for any work-related communication as much as possible. And that I prefer to work with clients who are perfectly able to get by without me 11 days a year.
I’d be curious to hear how you go about taking time off. Have you come up with a genius out-of-office message that you’d be happy to share with other freelancers? And how do you deal with work-related messages that come in through WhatsApp or other instant messaging apps? Get in touch at freelancerthefriendly@gmail.com
Have a great summer, whether you’re going on a holiday or staying put ☀️
Selma