Purpose doesn't take a vacation.

Read time: 3 min.

This is the first vacation I’ve ever brought my laptop to.

Not because I had to. Not because there were deadlines or emergencies or things that couldn’t wait. But because somewhere between packing my bags and boarding the flight, I realized I actually wanted to.

Why most people take vacation

For most of my life, vacation meant escape.

A break from the intensity. A week of deliberately doing nothing so I could go back and do everything again. Work on one side, rest on the other. The two existed in opposition, and the whole point of leaving was to get as far from one as possible.

The period before this trip made sense in that context. The book launch, the setbacks, seven days a week of constant forward motion. I was ready to stop.

But what I found here, in a villa in the mountains and a few days of relaxing, is something I didn’t expect.

I’m not depleted. I’m full.

And when you’re full, you don’t need to escape. You just want to put the energy somewhere good.

A conversation I remember

A while ago I spoke with someone who had traveled for five years.

Not a weekend. Five years. New countries, new people, new experiences, constantly moving.

The first two years were everything he’d imagined.

But somewhere in year three, something started to feel hollow.

Not the travel. The lack of purpose. The constant taking in without anything to give back. The absence of something that was his. Something he was building. Something that needed him.

He had all the freedom in the world and nothing to do with it that actually meant something.

That story stayed with me this week.

The laptop came with me

Almost every morning here I open the laptop for a couple of hours.

Not because anything requires it. Because I genuinely want to. Because thinking about what comes next with the community, the offer, the next chapter of Connect with Growth, gives me a smile before I’ve even started.

And then I close the laptop and go back to my friends.

Deep conversations that don’t happen as easily at home. The kind of openness that comes when you’re somewhere beautiful and unhurried and fully present with the people around you. That gets my full attention too.

Both things, fully. Neither one competing with the other.

The realization

I used to think rest and purpose were opposites.

That bringing work along meant you hadn’t properly disconnected.

That needing to do something, even on holiday, was a sign that something was wrong.

I don’t think that anymore.

The man who traveled for five years didn’t burn out from too much work. He burned out from too little purpose. From taking in constantly without anything to give back.

Purpose doesn’t drain you. The wrong work drains you.

When the work is right, it coexists with everything else. It doesn’t compete with rest or friendship or a week in Croatia. It just sits alongside it, quietly, ready when you are.

Most people need vacation to escape work.

But maybe the real luxury isn’t being able to leave your work behind.

It’s not needing to escape from it in the first place.

Much love,

— Martijn