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'tactical withdrawal.' :D
:hug:
No, I haven't really been on a formal retreat. I've gone to various events as a kid -- camps and hikes out in the boonies, for example, and multiday field trips -- that were sort of along the same lines and did a few martial arts camps later that might qualify in that they're along the same liens of what many people see 'retreats' as, which is basically workshops and the like. I happen to think that this latter definition of retreats is limiting and misses most of the point. A retreat can be focused on doing something or on doing nothing...both kinds are equally Zen-like, for that matter.
To a great extent, my marine research work in the tropics, in remote areas, was very much a retreat...certainly in comparison to the stuff I was frenetically doing back at my home institution at the time, when I was working on my PhD. I'd find my vision, as just one example, would begin to deteriorate and would begin to think that it was finally going on me (my vision is 20/10, but everyone else in my family now wears glasses for at least reading and once mine got so bad that when I was shopping for shoes I couldn't see the writing on the box on a high shelf in the store); after a few days in the field, though, out in nature and in areas where the horizon was a blue curve and you could see forever, I found that my vision was totally restored.
There're emotional and mental parallels, too...certainly, at the time, getting away from my wife was good for me even though I often missed her and stupidly cut short one two-month trip to get back to her (I say 'stupidly' because by the time we were halfway through the ride back from the airport I wondered why I had come back to her at all). She's since done many spiritual and yogic-style retreats, but I think my experiences in the field -- working, but living within a totally different environment -- are also applicable to your case: (i) you needn't go far (indeed, you needn't go anywhere, perhaps, but a change of scenery and a change of company is usually called for), (ii) you needn't spend much, and (iii) you needn't do anything, in particular, or you can use the opportunity to focus on improving or learning something or even just work (remote resorts are the classic) to support your extended break. It's mostly a state of mind...in fact, it's all in the mind.
I hope that a cunning plan presents itself to you...sometimes a break is a lifesaver. :hug:
:loveya:
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