My Pretend Spring Break (and why you should take one, too!)

Last year around this time, I started calling some of the fun things I was doing my "pretend spring break," partly because it made it sound more fun, partly because I was a little sad that I didn't have an actual vacation while many around me were enjoying time off and away from their work lives. First, I just did something fun that I didn't usually do--in fact, it had been years. I went on a mountain bike ride with my husband in the Wilderness Park near my home. It's not a particularly difficult ride, but there are definitely hills that I wasn't sure how I was going to navigate. Turns out, it was super fun.

As I did more fun things as the week went on, I started calling it my "pretend spring break," because I was doing so many more fun things that I usually do. And that kind of made me look for even more fun things to do as I moved into the second week of this imaginary vacation.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I read an article about how thinking about your weekend as if it were a vacation helps you feel happier, less negative, and more satisfied afterwards than just a regular weekend. And apparently you don't have to do spectacular things--it's the mindset that counts.

I have a friend who has done this for years. She even goes so far as to pretend her home is the vacation getaway, purchases good food to cook, buys a bottle of wine, gets flowers and with her husband spends the weekend at home but names it with a French moniker to make it sound even fancier, like Chez Appleton. (That's obviously my name and not hers, but you get the idea!)

According to the research, you don't even have to go the levels that my friend has done. Instead you can just approach the time as if it were vacation time. This shifts your mindset.