How Much Work Will I Do On My Summer Vacation?

Welcome to Summer Scratch!

We're proud of our first several months of publication, and we know we’re just getting started. This project is about shedding light on how writers are surviving the rapid decline of our industries, a rise in fascism and censorship, and the broader need for community and celebration. 

We're also tired, and taking the opportunity to loosen things up a little bit this summer. The next month or so will feature a somewhat more playful (and possibly experimental!) Scratch in your inbox. While we have you, will you send Scratch to a friend who could use it?

— Maggie, Latria, Rahawa, and Manjula

I married into a “real summer vacation” type of family. They (now, we) have gone to the same place in southern Oregon every year with the same group of people for a week every summer. My family never did anything of the sort. We were a: take a big backpacking and/or road trip every few years and otherwise run wild/be bored/watch too much TV all summer kind of family. And while I sometimes do prickle at giving up precious vacation days to return to a place I’ve been many, many times now, I’ve definitely found a particular type of comfort and relaxation in the routine, too. 

This year, things are going to be a tad different. The younger generation of family vacationers  — us 30-something tired parents  — took the reins and moved the whole shebang a couple-hundred miles north to a beach spot on the Oregon coast. I’m looking forward to the change. We’ve also added a few days of my extended family on to the other end — my aunt is hosting a birthday party in the Oregon mountains — and so my little family of four will be gone for a total of 10 days. Mostly outside, with lots of down time/family time/chill time. Idyllic, no? 

One thing I know will not change, however, is that this trip is always the time when I am not really ever 100% on vacation from work. Because, those of you who do the freelance thing know, we don’t get paid when we don’t work. For the past decade-plus I’ve been a full-time freelancer who has no such thing as paid time off. Inevitably, this means that a big work thing comes up while I’m supposed to be “away from my desk.” Ten-ish years ago it was often because I was a freelancer regularly working with women’s magazines, and the summer is when all the staffers are on vacation but they’d be putting together huge fall issues and need stories filed or sources tracked down asap. I have vivid memories of interviews I’ve done from rental house bedrooms shortly after completing an 8-hour drive after receiving a frantic email from an editor, and convincing lawyers to let their clients talk with me from my cell phone in a boiling hot parking lot while pretending to be a real deal magazine writer. More recently, as freelance magazine work has become fewer and farther between, it’s a podcast interview that gets thrown my way, or the newsletter I need to schedule, or the source I've been waiting on finally getting back to me, the minute I think I’m getting a little break.

Two summers ago — the year my book, Better Faster Farther: How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women, came out  — I did a TV interview with a local news station in Chicago from the upstairs bedroom of our southern Oregon rental house while my kids screamed downstairs and I prayed the WiFi would hold. Last year I had an interview scheduled with a gold medalist in judo who lives in Croatia (for a Sports Illustrated package that never ended up fully materializing) and she could only do it the week I was traveling. Of course, I got the time zones wrong so ended up doing the whole thing from my car parked outside of a coffee shop with little preparation and hoping my kids didn’t bust in. 

It’s not awful, though, working on vacations. I know I’m not supposed to say that. I know we all need more rest. But I’m also a working parent. And a freelance working parent of young children. Which means, everything I do is taking time from something else. And the work I do is because I need to pay my credit card bill, yes, but also because I feel called to do it. I enjoy writing about women athletes, and doing interviews, and digging deep on book research that I don’t think anyone else will do. Le sigh. Also, sometimes I need a little vacation from family on these trips (remember, I did not grow up doing this) and having an excuse to hole up in a coffee shop early one morning by myself to send a few emails, or draft up a story, isn’t the worst thing ever. Is that healthy? Probably not. But I’ll take some time to reassess that next year  — maybe on my family vacation. 

This year, here’s what I have planned to work on during my vacation*

• At least one hour of radio/podcast recording for my local women’s sports radio show, The Forecast. (We have been off for several weeks prior, so my break from this particular gig has already passed!)
• One Instagram post for Scratch. Yes, I run our Instagram account, now you know!
• Reading at least one book and taking notes for research for the book proposal project I’m playing with (I say “playing with” instead of “working on” because I haven’t done enough research to sell the thing yet, so it will be another year or two before I allow myself to talk about this seriously, I’m sure).
• Answering any emails or taking any calls related to a longform, heavily reported feature I’m working on freelance right now that needs a few more sources.
• Double-checking my syllabus for the 6-week writing class on how to research as a writer I start teaching two days after I return home. 
• Wrapping up at least a few copywriting assignments that will hopefully help me pay off my credit card this month. (Fingers crossed!)

*Does not include projects, interviews, requests, that inevitably will come up while I am gone. And I can’t promise I actually do all of this, either. The vacation work schedule is a funny thing – perhaps I just return home very very behind!

How do you do the writer vacation, Scratch readers? Honestly, we want to know!

This post was edited by Latria Graham.

Post-Credits Scene From the Garden

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