This week I’m playing in the SWGA Seattle City Championship at the Plateau Club in Sammamish, WA. It’s four days of competitive golf, and I am here for all of it — fully present, guilt-free, and not checking my email between holes. This the first time I’ve done this, and it’s a bigger deal than it sounds like. Not because I’m some amazing player steps away from the LPGA tour. I’m just an amateur player, not in contention to win the big prize. That’s not what it’s about.
Also: this is not one of those weird posts clumsily connecting a personal activity to business lessons as an excuse to post something on LinkedIn.
It Wasn’t That I Was a Workaholic
I took vacations. Good ones. A full two weeks away each year at least once, plus three other weeks over the year, (Microsoft was very generous with vacation time) and I could genuinely unplug. But it came with a price tag: a massive mail backlog, things that had been handled by someone else in my absence, sprinting to catch up to where everyone else was when I got back. Low-grade guilt and a week spent catching up: that was the tax on time away and I accepted it as normal, the cost of loving my job and being committed to it.
The harder thing was taking time off that didn’t have an obvious justification. A proper vacation had a socially acceptable narrative. Two weeks in Hawaii? Sure. A golf tournament? That felt different. Too indulgent. Not restful enough to count as recovery.
So I didn’t. Or I did it rarely, and only for shorter events with just one day away from work. And always with an undercurrent of guilt the whole time, checking mail between shots, not fully present.
What Tournament Golf Actually Demands
Playing four consecutive days of competitive golf is more demanding than it sounds. Each round requires patience when a hole goes sideways, focus on the shot in front of me rather than the one I just missed, and deliberate decision-making from the first tee to the last putt.
What strikes me this week is that I’ve grown into someone who can sustain that. Patient, focused, resilient. I learned some of this from golf, but it’s way more than that. I got here because of years of hard work, hard situations, and learning from failure. The tournament is just putting it smack in front of me.
The Permission Problem
My coach recently reminded me that part of my job is to enjoy my life. It was a timely reminder this week.
I am just as committed to my work now as I ever was. I care about my clients. I think hard about their problems. I show up fully. And I can also take four days to play golf in a tournament, enjoy the weather (Monday was brutal; the rest of the week will be perfect), make new friends on the course, and see familiar faces I only run into at events like this.
The difference is that I no longer need the time off to be justified. A golf tournament counts. It always did…rationally I knew that, but for a long time I couldn’t sit comfortably with that fact. So does a long lunch, a slow morning, or an afternoon in the garden. I got here through good fortune, hard work, privilege, and accumulated choices over a long time. I don’t take any of that lightly. I’m grateful to be able to do this, all of it: working independently, choosing the projects I take, deciding when to work and not, enjoying the fullness of my life.
I joke to people: “My boss is incredibly understanding and flexible about time off,” pointing to myself.
That’s the whole point.