Vacating The Frontal Lobe!

by Fred Brown, Northeast Family Federal Credit Union

SIX WEEKS!

How much vacation do you get? I get enough to keep me (relatively) sane, yet not so much that I am deliriously happy. I guess I am average in the vacation department.

I know a credit union CEO who has six weeks of vacation time. That doesn’t include any of the extra curricular activities, such as conferences or mentoring, but just plain old, regular, vanilla vacation. Granted, they had to endure a few decades on the job to accumulate that much time, but still, pretty darn good!

This recent revelation started me thinking about my last vacation. My wife and I headed to Asheville, North Carolina. We were thinking about moving to this beautiful area of the country and we thought 10 days in the middle of it would be a terrific way of judging. We drove to Asheville, lest we completely ignore what this great country has to offer, arriving a tad after dinnertime. This gave us plenty of time to unpack, eat and pass out. Seventeen hours on the road is tiring.

So there we are, enjoying the spectacular scenery of the Smokey Mountains, the delectable feasts of the Grove Park Inn, the artists of Black Mountain and all of the other many wonders Western North Carolina had to offer.

So (here’s where it hits the fan) the third day, I’ve relaxed enough to take off my sweater vest, and I’m reveling in a very tasty breakfast when the waiter says something (positive) about a bank being next door. I swear my wife put her head down, her hand over her eyes and uttered the phrase “Please! Not now!”

After over 8 minutes of stunning credit union facts, stories, history and anything else I could remember, our young waiter relented. He promised to take a break, right after we left (which he hoped was soon) and drive as fast as he could to Champion Credit Union to open an account.

At the end of a tenuous 3 hours of the silent treatment, Robin and I talked about the incident. She said she understood my passion for credit unions, applauded my willingness to help people, but she wondered if this would be a true vacation.

There it is! There’s the phrase I knew would be the crux of the problem. As it turned out, it wasn’t her problem, but mine.

You see, when I travel on business, other crazy, credit union people usually surround me. We all talk the same language. We can forgive one another when we become overly passionate. But when we’re with ordinary mortals, we must watch ourselves.

This forced to me to think about other times I may have been a bit too ambitious in extolling the virtues of credit unions. OK, I’ll admit, almost every time I take a honest-to-goodness vacation; I do mix in some credit union preaching. Why? Are you kidding WHY?  The why isn’t as important as the where or when.

If you are on vacation, you’re supposed to be getting away from everything, right? I mean, the Bahamas have credit unions, but if I’m sitting on a Bahamian beach, with a cool umbrella drink in one hand and a book in the other, I shouldn’t even remember what a credit union is. Should I?

I listen to a friend, who works with me say almost every day, “I need a vacation”. This wouldn’t be so bad, but she has said that same sentence every day since she returned from her last vacation.   It seems like she really needs/wants a vacation. The stresses of daily living can sometimes overwhelm you. I wonder how she spent her last vacation? Did she really disconnect or did she keep her phone with her?

It seems that if we, as caring, credit union professionals, who truly want to help people, unlike the Evil Empire, really want to do our best., we should really take care of our mental well being, as well as the physical. So don’t just eat more veggies, leave the smartphone, iPad, and computer in the case a bit longer and stop to smell the roses.

I don’t think the length of your vacation is as important as the quality of your vacation. I have precious few vacation days, but I’ve learned to pack a lot of time into just a few days. Do you?

How do you unwind?  Tell me.