Summer Break for Adults: Out Of Office

Written By : Hannah Corbett

When I was a kid, summer was endless. School let out in June, and for three whole months, life was a blur of sunscreen, sleepovers, and snacking at midnight. A Tuesday could be anything: a beach day, a bike ride.  But as I sat at my desk barefoot, because I work from home now, I couldn’t help but think: Do adults get summer break?

After graduation, transitioning into adulthood, or how people like to say: the real world. Summer doesn’t disappear, it just changes. We trade in our research papers for endless emails, and our three-month hiatus for a three-day weekend (if we remembered to request PTO two months ago). “Summer” becomes more of a mood than a season, something you try to squeeze in between deadlines and calendar invites.

And when you work from home, it’s even stranger. I love working from home.  I get to be as creative as I want to be while in my slippers.   You wake up in the same place you work. The commute to my desk is 10 steps to the coffee machine. But with all of that, I still feel a light sting.  It's the beginning of June, and instead of prepping for the last day of classes, I'm watching vacationers walk down to the beach through my windows while I write.

I’ve realized that freedom without boundaries is a trap dressed up in yoga pants. Just because I can be available 24/7 doesn’t mean I should be.  So lately, I’ve been trying to give myself back a bit of summer. A lunch break that actually includes lunch. A walk to the beach before my iMac burns out. A Summer Friday that feels less like a myth and more like a moment I scheduled on purpose.

Summer Fridays are a completely new concept to me.  I used to think that it was just the jet lag face mask brand, before they had the lip balms.  When my old boss mentioned it to me two years ago I was stunned.  Getting out of work on a Friday felt like a dream.  I know that not everybody gets them but, when you have them, it feels like the grown-up version of being picked up early from school. There’s still work to do, but it can wait until Monday. You close your laptop with a flourish and suddenly remember what it felt like to be off.

So now that I basically work with no one telling me, ‘okay, it’s time to go home’, I'm wondering, how do I implement Summer Fridays, or just summer at all?

I started with making an automatic email saying Sorry, I'm out of office until I'm tanner.  I wrote something more professional than that, but you get the point. Starting at 12pm on Fridays, I can be one with the sand.  And for the rest of the summer, I realized that you really have to make the most of it. 

Unless you’re an influencer, school teacher, or nepo baby.  I'm pretty sure everyone else has to work through the summers.  Making summer a mindset is something I’ve talked about before, but I don't think it actually hit me until right now. How I actually need to make that feeling a priority. 

I’ll be sure to report back in a month or so, when it’s around the 4th of July and summer is in full swing.  But until then, if you’re working from home, or in an office, or wherever you are.  Make sure to keep that summer feeling alive, and set your emails to OOO.