6 signs you are in desperate need of a holiday
1. You spend more time looking at your phone than you do your friends and family
Do you need to have your phone in your hand or on your person 24/7 and feel a sudden sense of panic when you don’t know where it is? Do you check your Facebook before you say good morning to your partner? When your smoked salmon and smashed avocado open turkish sandwich is placed in front of you do you feel yourself reaching for your phone to take a snap? When you’re at a friend’s place are you more interested in their wifi password than you are their newborn baby?
If you answered yes to any of the above, an escape is definitely in need.
Fresh coastal air, a change of scenery and a slow internet connection may be just what the doctor ordered.
Time to get your nose out of your phone and spend some quality face to face time with your friends and family (Facetime doesn’t count). Who knows, you might even notice something you didn’t before…like see a shooting star or that your partner has green eyes (that was a joke…surely no-ones THAT bad).
2. You feel like you’re stuck in a routine with nothing to look forward to
You do the same thing everyday: eat, sleep, work, repeat.
You have become bogged down in a routine that has made you annoyed and fed up with everything in your miserable old life:
- your job
- your colleagues
- your wardrobe (“I wear the same clothes every day!”)
- your slow laptop,
- slow walkers,
- your haircut (even a head massage can’t lift you from your slump) and
- even your dog Rusty who just wants to play
You feel like you need something to look forward to, so you start planning your Friday ‘Girls Night’ on Monday (without this little light at the end of the tunnel there is no way you could survive the week).
3. You don’t go out anymore
By the time Friday night comes around you are so exhausted from work/not in the mood and you don’t end up going on your ‘Girls Night’.
Instead, you sit on the couch in your work clothes with Chinese takeaway on your lap and 4 screens in front of you (one for Facebook, one for Instagram, one for online shopping and the fourth is for Netflix, duh!) until you hit the sheets at 9.30pm (this is secretly the highlight of your week).
4. You spend a lot of time daydreaming about white sandy beaches and cocktails
Do you find yourself daydreaming about poolside cocktails instead of listening to your boss in a meeting? Is your search history filled with Jetstar, Groupon and wotif? Do you often find yourself deeply buried in a friend of a friend’s holiday album on Facebook? On your way to work some days do you daydream about – or even contemplate – spontaneously waving down a taxi and saying to the driver, “take me to the airport!” and jumping on board the next plane? If so, you are well and truly in the ‘dreaming’ phase of a modern traveller – you know you want an escape but not sure where.
5. You have memorised the city’s bus and train timetables
This speaks for itself. You know that place too well and you need to explore somewhere unfamiliar.
6. You have 127 excuses as to why you can’t go on a holiday
Do you tell yourself “I’m going away for the long weekend”, or “Soon, I’ll take a week off work and go on a road trip”. When you see a picture of a cool place on Instagram, do you tag your friends and comment “let’s do this!” or “let’s go there!”? Then, whenever you get the chance to go you always make excuses as to why you can’t – especially if it’s far away and requires a few days. Sometimes, you just have to take a leap, forget the excuses and book the flight or it’ll never happen.