…and say hello to a new category on The Anna Edit
OH HELLO NEW CATEGORY! You seen it? Look up at the top right of the page if you’re on desktop, or on the pop-out menu if you click on the top right corner of your mobile browser and there’s a brand new category for you to peruse all about travel. R.I.P fitness category! Fitness posts can now be found as part of ‘Life‘ and were absorbed into there because quite frankly all I have to talk about in relation to fitness these days is just how much I love Reformer Pilates, and I don’t think that will be changing anytime soon. It’s still a topic I’ll cover from time to time with recipes and wellness and workout updates, but I felt like it was time to make travel a headline subject around here. Plus, it will hopefully make it easier for you to locate my city guides, packing lists and tips and tricks for planning and budgeting for holidays. One click and it’s there.
So what are our plans travel-wise for 2019? Well thank you so much for asking and today I’m sharing my rather lengthy response to that question, along with my advice for how to take time off if you work for yourself, which is a topic that I struggled with for years before I finally found peace on the matter. Scroll down for our year-long itinerary and my tips for freelancers…
Mark and I are planning on hitting travel HARD this year, because quite honestly aside from saving for one day eventually moving into a proper house with a garden and our own front door (which should in theory mean that we should never eat out/go on holiday/leave the house ever again – but you have to live your life, you know?), we don’t have any other big things to save for. We did the wedding thing on a budget and have no plans for children in the immediate future. Mark is currently doing a Masters in his spare time after work so we’ll work around his exams to fit in our holiday plans, but I don’t have any huge projects that will be taking up a tonne of my time; like how last year was mostly spent secretly writing a book! And actually once the book tour wraps up I feel like some R&R should definitely be on the cards.
The big trip that we’d love to do is a three-week road trip around California – probably around May/June time. We might try to coincide flying out with our second wedding anniversary which will be a step up from our first wedding anniversary that we spent stuffing our faces with cake and Prosecco at a first birthday party. Mark has never visited the west coast of the U.S and it will be nice to mix in mini city breaks in Los Angeles and San Francisco, with more scenic adventures as we travel between the two. Plus we now know that we both love road trips. Our New Zealand road trip was genuinely the highlight of our lives that we reminisce about twice a week on average.
So that’s the big one out of the way, although throughout the year we hope to pepper in some city breaks with friends and visits to cities that we haven’t seen yet. Your top recommendations on a postcard please. Amsterdam to see our pals who live out there is already booked in for late February and we’d like to visit a few more times in 2019 because we just love it that much. We’re considering visiting over NYE which could be a corker. Other European destinations that we’re perusing include Oslo, Riga, Prague and Vienna. Those could be some stunning long-weekends – we’ll keep you updated. Wish you were here and all that.
HOW TO TAKE TIME OFF IF YOU WORK FOR YOURSELF
At the beginning. In those early days, when even just 48 hours off the grid might stop the ball rolling completely, accept that time off just might not be an option. Whilst we need to honour our bodies when they feel both mentally and psychically exhausted, a holiday with days or weeks out of the country might just not be feasible. Instead partake in a 24 hour digital detox or shorter self-care remedies that you can do at home to replenish your energy stocks when you need to.
Holidays might not look the same. I left my part-time job back in 2012 to work on my blog full-time and I didn’t take a laptop-free, completely work-free holiday until December 2017. LOLZ. Now I’m not asking for a medal here because I’m sure with the correct planning and scheduling I could have taken that kind of holiday way sooner, but I just learnt to accept that holidays look a little different sometimes when you work for yourself. The odd call here and there, an important email to reply to, the need to take your laptop with you ‘just incase’ – and that’s cool. Being able to wear tracksuit bottoms at your desk/having to take your laptop on holiday with you; it’s all swings and roundabouts, eh?
28 days holiday. Now most workers in the U.K get a pretty sweet deal when it comes to paid holiday and Mark gets a good package. If you too have a partner or friends and family in full-time employment it’s quite handy to use them as a measure of holiday-taking days. Of course Mark and I don’t go on every single holiday together, but we do most of the time and knowing that he has managed to get the time off work helps with the guilt I sometimes feel about taking time off. That might sound a little odd, but over the years it’s really helped to use this figure as a benchmark and manage just how many vacation days I feel comfortable giving myself.
ENJOY IT! Ultimately whether you work for yourself or not, we all deserve time off – so ENJOY IT. Try to switch off as best you can, have fun, make memories and all those other Instagram cliches. I personally find that time off leaves me feeling refreshed when I come back to work, with new ideas and a revived energy for it and ain’t they great? Aside from how painful early mornings feel after a week of lie-ins. Let’s try and do that more, eh?
Photos by Mark & I, taken on a Canon EOS 33
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