I Spent 3 Days at a Cabin and Went Viral on LinkedIn (not clickbait!)

Storytime.

After working every day nonstop for over a year, plus juggling grad school and maintaining a home and dogs, I decided that it was time for a well-deserved break.

Months of hemming and hawing later, I embarked on an intrepid journey to unplug. Truly. I packed up my typewriter (where I wrote the first draft of this), planned out my meals and crafting projects, and set out to spend a few days at a cabin in the woods, only a couple hours from home.

I can't remember when I started getting ads for these cabins, but whoever is in charge of paid advertising over at Getaway should get a raise. They have their targeting exactly right. Getaway bills themselves as a respite for people who are terminally online. Those of us who find ourselves glued to our computers, made all the worse due to an increase of remote work during the pandemic. Our productivity may be at an all-time high, but our ability to relax...well, there's some work that needs to be done.

Psst, the link above is a referral link, but I would suggest them even if I didn't have one. You'll believe that by the end of this post.

Even though I am fully in charge of my own schedule, I can tend to be the worst boss ever. Oh, there's money to be made? We'd better make it! Someone needs a project turned around by yesterday? You weren't planning on like, resting, were you?

Something I have learned about myself is that I have to force myself to relax. Maybe it won't be that way forever, but it's like that for now.

So, after a weekend of getting my ducks in a row, setting up away messages, and saying goodbye to my pups and partner, I headed out to my own private Getaway.

Let me tell you, the place is awesome! As soon as I arrived at the campsite, I understood the fuss. The cabins are designed in a chic, minimalist way. Heck, the signs are even cool. Each cabin has a super cute name. And the view, oh my god. The huge window in my cabin was my favorite part of the entire trip.

This was out my freaking window, like, are you kidding me?

If you wanted to, you wouldn't have to bring much of anything to your cabin (this is where I should mention that outside of the referral code, again, nobody is paying me to say this stuff...but Getaway, if you need more ambassadors, hit me up!).

You can order a provision kit and spend $30 for all the food you'd need for a few days away. But I am a foodie, and a particular one at that, so I brought way more food than I needed. Ditto crafting, books, and wardrobe changes.

The one-bed cabin I stayed in is the perfect size for one person. Two would be kind of cramped, but you could make it work, especially with the beautiful weather I had. I was able to make food on burners inside and at the fire outside. Waking up to beautiful fall colors as I opened my giant shade was a wonderful feeling I hope to repeat in future years.

Time felt expansive.

I spent most of the full day I had at the cabin writing content for my own projects and endeavors, something that always seems to fall by the wayside in favor of client or schoolwork. Every time I took a walk on the nature path, I came back with another seemingly brilliant idea. I don't know if it was the fresh air, my cell phone being put in a "lockbox," or that I finally had a good night of sleep, but I felt so inspired by my time away.

Yes, my phone did live in here for a decent part of the weekend. Of course, not when I was snapping photos.

You know what they say about the best-laid plans...

Now, if you know me, you also probably know that I pride myself on being responsive and available. While I still mostly see this as a positive attribute, I have also learned over time that this particular practice reeks of invisible boundaries. Because of this, for the past 3 years, I have been working on saying "no" more, turning my phone off, and taking time for myself, sans intrusions.

I need you to believe me when I tell you that I had every intention of not checking my phone for the entire trip.

Here's the reality - boundary-setting requires practice, like anything else. Anxiety is also hard to overcome. To keep myself mostly unplugged, I did feel the need to check in from time to time, just to make sure there were no emergencies at home, or there wasn't some urgent thing that slipped my mind.

I did really well on the first night, I swear. I turned off my data for a few minutes, saw no urgent emails, and turned it off again. Miffed that none of my downloaded movies saved on my iPad for some reason, I went to sleep to one of the few YouTube videos I had downloaded a month ago.

The next morning

In the morning, I woke up to the kind of thing that always makes me so worried to be without my phone. I went viral on LinkedIn.

Well, viral for me. At the time I'm writing this, I have almost 1,000 reactions, 200+ comments, 20 shares, and over half a million post impressions. Definitely nothing to sneeze at.

There I was, at a cabin dedicated to unplugging, writing notes on a damn Hermes Baby typewriter, and I was going viral on LinkedIn.

So many DMs to respond to. So many comments to reply to - including the company I had written about! What was I going to do?

Here's the part where I give myself some credit

The me I was 3 years ago would have driven to a coffee shop with Wi-Fi and spent part of my vacation responding to the hundreds of commenters on my account. The old me would have gotten sucked in and distracted, probably blowing her time off before she even got to enjoy the wide open expanse of the day.

You want to know what 2022 me did?

I turned off my phone and started crocheting.

I worked on and off on two crochet projects, read some books, and made oatmeal and coffee. I went on a walk. I worked on my 2023 brand manual and finalized my unique selling proposition. I made tacos. I made a fire. I listened to a podcast. And I wrote about going viral on LinkedIn on my typewriter.

My trusty Hermes Baby really got a workout. I even wrote my thank you letter to Getaway using it!

If I am ever blessed enough to have a team, this is the way I would want them to act during their time away from work - doing whatever they wanted. Honestly, that's what got me to turn off my phone in the first place. I thought, if I was my employee, what would I tell her to do? I would tell her to log off and enjoy these absolutely-straight-out-of-a-Thomas-Kinkade-painting fall colors all around her, that completely unreal blue sky, and get back to business matters in her own damn time.

Life is not about hustle, or maximizing your productivity, or being available all the time. It's about enjoying the world around you with a sense of perpetual wonder. It's about taking time to relax and drink everything in. It's about learning when to put your phone down.

It's not lost on me that the post that went viral is about a workplace that is being accused of over-automating and productivity to a fault. The amount of people who have DMed me privately and messaged publicly is still staggering to me, and I am nowhere near sifting through it all (if I have more thoughts on it all, I promise to share, but I'm seriously still just catching up!) But what was I supposed to do in the moment? Sacrifice my rest in the name of engagement?

We have entered the new world of work, ushered in by the pandemic and kicked into high gear by The Great Resignation. There are leaders who want to believe that it is a trend, but I refuse to operate in that way. We should not strive for productivity at any cost. The work will be there for us when we come back from our nap, or the movies, or a weekend away. Our limited time on this planet is the finite resource.

Next time I go on a Getaway, my goal is to do even better. I'm going to try to keep my phone off the entire time. Yes, another great one like Angela Lansbury might pass while I'm gone (rest in peace you absolute legend and boss). Yes, I might go viral on LinkedIn again (or TikTok next time, fingers crossed). But that's the chance I'll have to be willing to take in exchange for living my life on my terms.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to watch some reality television before I respond to eleventybillion emails.

Yours in forever making progress toward healthier boundaries,

--Sammi