Relax, Already Summer Vacations Aren’T Always Getaways These Days, As Some People Just Can’T Leave Work Behind

Denise Fox has outsold every other residential real-estate agent in Spokane the past three years. And guess who’s leading the pack again this year?

To succeed, 45-year-old Fox works 12 to 14 hours a day, often seven days a week.

“My last cell-phone bill, I had 6,000 minutes,” she said. That’s more than three hours a day, every day of the month.

Fox says it’s important for people to get away and relax every once in a while. Yet she hasn’t taken a vacation in two years.

And the last time she did, Fox rented a special cell phone so her office and clients could reach her at a remote site.

“I care about my customers a lot,” Fox explains, “and I want to make sure everything goes smoothly.”

Staying connected to work - physically or electronically - has become an American obsession in the 1990s.

Historian Cindy Aron, author of “Working at Play: A History of Vacations in the United States” (Oxford University Press, $35), tells of taking a two-week break last summer at her extended family’s beach house, which, “by unanimous consent…contains no television, allowing us to enjoy our evenings with conversation, Scrabble and books.”

And yet, she writes, “I recall one specific afternoon when a fax was arriving over the phone line, one person was talking on a cell phone on the porch, another on a cell phone in the living room, and FedEx was making a delivery.”

As one relative was heard to mutter, “What ever happened to vacations?”

Michael Waliser wonders the same thing.

“I just took a week off for the first time in two years,” says the 38-year-old owner and chef at Cafe 5-Ten on South Freya. “I went to Chicago.” For pleasure? “For a restaurant show. But that was the first time I’d been out of town in 10 years.”

Waliser works six days a week, usually from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.

“I dream of being able to get away at least once every three months or so for a few days,” he says. “But I’m such a key part of this business that it’s hard to turn the whole thing over to just anybody.”

Spokane investment adviser Gary Shea remembers those days. He worked six or seven days a week the first 10 years of his career.

“It was just insane,” he recalls.

Shea, 48, took just two weeks off for the first time.

“That was three or four days too long,” he decided afterward. “I don’t think (the office) missed me, but I missed being here. I manage people’s investments, and I found when I got back that (two weeks) was a little long to be out of communication with my clients.”

Dr. Ruth Langstraat, senior district medical director at Group Health Northwest in Spokane, believes so strongly in the virtues of vacations that she sometimes prescribes them for patients who “look like they’re about to hit the wall.” But she admits there’s no definitive medical research to back her up.

“There have been some studies looking at the benefits of vacations,” Langstraat says. “Part of what they found is that, somewhere between three days and three weeks after a vacation, all the benefits are gone.”

The most important thing, Langstraat says, is that “when folks go on vacation, they choose something they enjoy, something that pulls at their heartstrings.”

Good Housekeeping offered similar advice 62 years ago, suggesting that readers “make every hour of the vacation a happy one” and “be thoroughly selfish for a few days and consult your own likes and dislikes.”

But, as Witold Rybczynski notes in his 1991 book “Waiting for the Weekend” (Viking), generations of Americans also have been warned about indulging in “idleness.”

For instance, in 1930 Walter Lippmann addressed what he called “the problem of leisure.” The popular political columnist argued that American society didn’t prepare workers to make creative use of their spare time and that paid vacations were a temptation to squander time and money on unfulfilling “mass entertainments and commercial amusements.”

Historian Aron traces this American ambiguity toward vacation back to the Puritanical belief that leisure and idleness led to moral and financial decay.

Vacations weren’t an issue in this country 250 years ago. Travel in America wasn’t something done for pleasure back then.

Roads were bad, maps nonexistent and lodging grim.

Even 150 years ago, the word “vacation” was still used exclusively to describe a student or teacher’s break from school. But already physicians were noticing the merits of treating their urban patients who had strained “the thinking faculties” by prescribing “the relaxation and corporeal exercise (available) in a pure rural atmosphere.”

Thanks to the expansion of America’s rail system after the Civil War, the popularity of vacations grew rapidly during the late 1800s, Aron writes. And many businesses, perhaps sensitive to the medical and popular warnings about the dangers of overwork, began making at least one week’s paid vacation standard practice for white-collar “brain workers.”

Factory workers were among the last to earn paid vacations. But by World War II, Aron writes, the modern vacation phenomenon was firmly established.

And so was the subtle message that work, not play, is still the key to success.

Some people today avoid the dilemma by taking industrious vacations. Elderhostel offers “educational adventures” for people 55 and older, while Habitat for Humanity gives vacationers an opportunity to build low-income housing in developing countries.

Theme-park capital Orlando, Fla., has the Disney Institute, where visitors can take workshops in gardening, culinary art or goal-setting.

Of course, many Americans would prefer to lounge on a remote beach somewhere … as long as they have their cell phone, pager and laptop computer handy.

Does that mean they’re not really on vacation?

Not necessarily, says Group Health’s Langstraat.

“Sometimes it’s more relaxing to stay connected,” she says. “It varies by circumstance and individual.

“Some people are so connected (to their jobs) that it’s part of their self-identity and self-worth to be needed at work,” she says. “To take that away from them doesn’t make them feel any better about themselves.”

And stressful vacations can be counterproductive, Langstraat says. By the same token, learning to relax at work can offer the same sort of relief as a good holiday.

She says recent studies have shown that taking a minibreak during the work day to practice meditation or imagery can help lower blood pressure and provide other health benefits normally associated with vacations.

Accountant Roger Fruci, 46, agrees.

Fruci, a principal with Fruci & Associates in Spokane, admits office life can get crazy during tax season.

“We work an awful lot of hours, and if we wanted to, we could work even more,” he says. “When you’re providing a personal service, it’s hard to provide too much service.”

In his profession, Fruci says, “people tend to take a situation that is truly stressful and make it worse by always worrying about it.”

Yet Fruci says it doesn’t take more than a day and a half away for him to feel recharged.

His secret: “I spend over an hour a day meditating. It’s the only thing in my life I never miss.”

Occasionally, Fruci also spends a day or two in total silence at a local retreat center.

“It’s a very powerful experience,” he says. “After 24 or 36 hours of silence, it’s amazing how much energy you build up.”

Frances Agars, 57, knows the feeling. In fact, her annual summer “vacation” combines peaceful retreat with the advantages of staying connected via technology.

And she even gets paid - $12 a day.

Agars and her husband, Central Washington University art professor John Agars, split duties at a fire lookout in the Priest Lake Ranger District.

“The best part is the solitude,” says Agars. “It’s such a luxury waking up at 5 in the morning when the sun is streaming into your eyes, and sit there in bed with your cup of coffee and watch the sun come up for two hours.”

Agars communicates with the Forest Service by two-way radio twice a day and listens to the morning news from National Public Radio. But generally she prefers the quiet.

With only her golden retriever Buck for company, Agars can go days without seeing anyone … or anything.

“Any lookout will tell you there are times when you’re bored,” she says, “especially if it’s foggy and you’re socked in. It’s like sitting in the middle of a ball of cotton candy.”

Agars acknowledges that getting away from civilization isn’t for everyone.

“For some people, maybe their high is working seven days a week.” she says. “Part of my high is sitting on a mountaintop.

“It’s hard to explain. It’s just very freeing.”