---
title: Going on Vacation for Two Months
date: '2023-06-04'
slug: on-vacation
---

Believe it or not, the best break I had over the last few years was when I got
COVID in December last year. Physically I felt quite painful, but mentally I was
completely relaxed in those three days. To me, the best indicator for a great
break is that I can totally ignore the clock. Just forget the time, and forget
all things ruled by time. It doesn't matter if I want to have breakfast at 5am
or 11am, or get up at 3am or 5pm. No calendar reminders. No Slack messages. No
hurry. As if the outside world had just stopped running. I stayed in bed for
almost three full days, and did only one thing: I wrote a short novel in memory
of my grandma, who passed away twenty years ago.

My favorite way of spending vacation time is writing, such as writing blog posts
or letters to friends. I'm not very interested in traveling, unless it's a trip
from my home office to the kitchen, or a trip with close friends (in which case
I don't care about the destination). Compared to traveling by body, I enjoy
traveling by mind more. When I sit quietly in front of my computer and type out
words, I can travel back in time by two or three decades.

I will have worked for RStudio/Posit for ten full years in the coming August.
Perhaps I'll write some reflections then (like [Norm
did](https://github.com/matloff/FarewellAddress)). Before then, I'll take the
longest break in the ten years, which will be two months. In June, I won't be
working but learning (most likely Lua) instead. In July, I'll be mostly offline,
to visit my family in China, whom I haven't seen for seven years.

Although my employer strongly encourages us to take a break every few months, I
still don't feel completely comfortable with taking a break, especially a long
one. I'm too used to GitHub and email notifications. However, ever since my
colleague [Christophe](https://cderv.rbind.io) joined me in 2020, I have become
much less concerned about GitHub issues. He has always done a splendid job
dealing with those issues. For emails, I'll have difficulty access Google
services, including Gmail. I'd encourage you to use [GitHub
discussions](https://github.com/yihui/yihui.org/discussions) instead, but I can
only promise to read them in June and can't promise to respond to them (other
people might help you). You can still email me, but I'm just very slow in
general responding to emails even when I'm in the US.

I have heard many times that my hometown looks quite different now, which I'm
eager to see. We will fly out tomorrow. It will be quite a journey since we will
have to make six stops in total. It has been extremely difficult to travel
between US and China since the pandemic due to the very limited number of
flights. Anyway, I'm thankful that it's possible to travel now, even if it's
much less convenient than before. My parents can finally see their grandsons for
the first time. My father has been "threatening" me over these years that if I
still don't go home, I may not have a chance to see him any more.

See you all in August!
