On ‘bleisure’

The Transitioning Traveler, in addition to suggesting wonderful places to take a week between your old job/life and new job/life, we will occasionally comment on travel-related matters we believe important for the ex judicata community.

We recently were directed to the website of Carl Friedrik, apparently a UK-based seller of ‘travel goods’.   In particular, a survey they did titled: “The Best Bleisure Cities in Europe” 

We don’t know what was more troubling, the portmanteau ‘bleisure’, or the idea that somehow combining work with a vacation was a novel idea.  People have been combining work with a vacation in Europe going back at least to when Charlemagne visited the Pope in Rome in 772.  As a quick travel aside, history tells us that the King walked the Pantheon.  It is then a virtual certainty that he stood directly under the oculus.  If you’ve not seen the Pantheon, go.  Under the oculus is one of those magical places in the world where you stand exactly in the shoes of giants.

Avoid the temptation to do some ‘prep work’ for your new job. ‘I just want to read up a little in The Vest Pocket MBA’  

Now in fairness to Carl Freidrik (Is this an actual person?  Hard to tell, apparently the brand was started by a pair of brothers.  Maybe one is Carl and the other brother drew the short straw?) the pandemic did give many more people the freedom to work from home and by extension from other places remotely. 

But many occupations have always enjoyed this kind of freedom since the advent of the world wide web.  To take one example, very close to home, legal recruiting.  We recall people ‘in’ the NYC office working from San Francisco and Steamboat Springs.  And one hardy soul who holed up in Singapore with its 12-hour time difference.  He’d call on east coast jobs all night and then sleep during the day. Some believed he was a fugitive from justice.  Others thought he was just crazy.  But everyone working outside of the office said while they enjoyed some leisure activities where they were, work trumped all.

Now to the point of all this, ex judicata community members, when you quit your job as a practicing lawyer and prepare to move to business and that new lease on life, please be sure your week or two weeks off is 100% vacation.  You have earned it.   Avoid the temptation to do some ‘prep work’ for your new job.  Because once you start: ‘I just want to read up a little in The Vest Pocket MBA’ (this is a 576-page book) or ‘I’m just going to leaf through Insurance & Behavioral Economics: Improving Decisions in the Most Misunderstood Industry (338 pages) it will be hard to stop and more and more of what should have been vacation turns into work.

‘bleisure’, my goodness.

Safe travels.

 .Ed