It’s the evening of the last day of our holiday and I just started packing. Usually, I’d have gone over every detail of today and tomorrow in my head for a couple of days. Partially to ensure that there would be a solid plan for the journey, but mostly because I’d be longing to go home.
I’m not sure why this year is different. I’m still looking forward to going home. To my beautiful house, my comfortable bed and my perfect shower (with a view) and, even though A and I enjoy each other’s company very much, also to being alone.
And yet we are strangely unprepared. We don’t even know at what time we had to check out in the morning. While discussing it we landed on “probably a bit earlier than we are ready on most days”. Which is a fair assumption, as we would otherwise certainly miss our flight.

This holiday feels like it’s somehow not “done” yet. I can’t exactly pinpoint why that is. Perhaps because the influence from hurricane Leslie has meant that the weather hasn’t been as good as we’d have hoped. The weather was after all one of the main reasons why we chose to come here. We still had a great holiday though with some fun day trips and a couple of beach days, some tennis and a bit of running.

Perhaps the feeling is caused by my memories of the brilliant holiday that we had last year. To be fair, A had to remind me that I was actually sick for the first few days of that holiday, my memory had put that minor detail conveniently aside. But other than that, we had a great apartment (our first Airbnb experience). We were surprised by the stunning beaches and coastline of Crete, which we explored in the best possible (rental) car (an Alfa Romeo Giulietta). It also where and when I rediscovered my love for reading books. Two of the books that I read last year, Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Busy by Tony Crabbe changed the way I work. After reading those books I blocked one day per week without meetings and on the other days, I also try to have three hours without meetings. I use this time to work on longer-term and more strategic projects. This approach means that I can look beyond today’s problem and the never-ending stream of email. It makes me happier and more productive. I also regularly feel like I’m in control of my days. Which is a big improvement.

This year I’ve read the amazing number of seven books during my holiday. Although I don’t think any of them will have as big an impact as Flow and Busy did, I did enjoy reading them and I got something out of all of them. For those curious, I’ll do a list.

• I wanted to read I’m a joke and so are you by comedian Robin Ince because I found out that the book contained insights from an interview with Tim Minchin. The book is an examination of the human condition. I wrote a post about the inner voices that Robin describes in the book.
• Leigh Sales is an Australian writer, journalist and news anchor. Leigh had been very lucky in life (by her own account) for many years and suddenly had to deal with several of life’s unexpected blows. In order to deal with her own anxiety, she decided to find out how people deal with sometimes unimaginable loss. I learned about Any Ordinary Day through the podcast “Chat 10 Looks 3” that Leigh creates together with Annabel Crabb in which they discuss theatre, television, and books. Leigh is a great journalist, but she also had a lot of empathy and compassion and she is acutely aware of her own biases. The book provides some very interesting insights into how people who have experienced incredible losses dealt with that. On top of that, it includes a lot of research on the way we deal with grief and fear. I’d recommend both the podcast and the book.
• During an impromptu Twitter Q&A, brought about by a delayed flight, Tim Minchin (anyone who knows me well won’t be surprised by this recurring theme) shared that he was reading Gould’s book of fish by Richard Flanagan. I figured that what’s good enough for Tim is good enough for me. At the start, this turned out to be slightly optimistic, as I found it quite hard to read as a non-native English speaker. Luckily it either got easier as the book progressed, or I got used to it. The story is unusual, but interesting and the end is surprising and beautifully written.
• Feminists don’t wear pink (and other lies) was supposed to be promoted in Top Shop in London, but the owner of Top Shop shut down the promotion at the last minute, causing quite some outrage on Twitter. This was how I found out about the book, which is a collection of essays by women on what feminism means to them. I expected this to be very moving, but I must admit that I was slightly disappointed by it. It’s a great initiative of course and I did learn from several of the stories, but it wasn’t as impactful as I hoped it would be.
• Stella Rimington’s At Risk had been recommended by someone who knows me well several years ago, but it took me this long to try it. He was right though, I really enjoyed it. Stella is a former director of MI5 and At Risk is the first in a series about MI5 officer Liz Carlyle. It’s tense, but not too tense and Liz is a great character. I’ll definitely read the rest of the series as well.
• The ideas behind Multipliers by Liz Wiseman were used in a training that I attended, but I never took the time to read the entire book until now. It describes how leaders either multiply how much they use of what the people around them have to offer, or how they (accidentally) diminish it. Like the training, the book really inspired me. I will definitely try to apply more multiplier behavior in my work. I normally read books on an e-reader, but I also ordered both the English and the Dutch paperbacks of this book. The English one because a physical book is more convenient to look things up and the Dutch one for people who are interested in reading it too.
• For months now there has been a buzz on Twitter about the book and theatre show This is going to hurt by Adam Kay. Adam is a former NHS doctor and in this book, he shares his experiences. This book made me laugh out loud a lot (sorry A!), but it also made me cry. I absolutely recommend this because it’s funny, but it also gives some very valuable insight into the lives of junior doctors. Spoiler alert: they are not in it for the money!
• Bonus: While in London on a city trip in May, A and I visited Shakespeare’s globe theatre. I had wanted to do that for years and finally made it a priority. It didn’t disappoint. I’ve been fascinated by Shakespeare for a long time and some of this was revived by Matt Haig’s How to stop time, which I read earlier this year. I was always worried that reading Shakespeare might be difficult, but after doing the tour of the theatre I bought Hamlet. I’ve now started reading it and I’m enjoying both the story and the fact that I’m finally reading it.

Phew! Summarizing the holiday and my reading was exactly the closure that I needed. I’m ready to go home tomorrow!