How Christmas turned into a Virtual Winter Retreat

I usually spend Christmas with Jane, my best-friend-since-we-were-14. Usually, she flies from Boise (where we grew up) to my house in Albuquerque. (My brother and aunt live here too, and she calls us her Christmas family.) Sometimes when I tell people she is coming they say, “Do you have anything special planned?” And I reply, “I just told you. Jane is coming!” No, we don’t usually have much else planned. We are too busy watching TV, eating, and talking.

↑ ↑ This is us, pre- and post-COVID, when we inadvertently switched hairstyles.

But things change, and sometimes things happen. This year, when we agreed she wasn’t coming (for reasons that are not important here) I said, “But we can still have a fun week spending Christmas together virtually.” How? Well, it’s not like we’ve never watched TV together at the same time before, while texting our comments back and forth during the show.

Then I added, “What if we added a productivity component and made it into a Virtual Winter Retreat?” Jane was enthusiastically like-minded, and so we did.

Our agenda was pretty loose, but I’ve found that a little structure can go a long way.

Each morning

Whatever time we got around to it, we shared our goals for the day. We agreed on categories and aimed for one thing (completion or progress) in each category, per day. If we had time for more, and felt like it, we did more. Some days lots more.

Our categories, including a sample day, were:

Adulting (anything we find boring but still needs to be done)Me: Review budget and expensesJane: Renew auto registrationHealth (including, but certainly not limited to, physical activity)Me: PT exercisesJane: PickleballShort-term project (something with an internal or external deadline)Me: Write January newsletterJane: Take donations to GoodwillLong-term project (something on which we want to make a little regular progress)Me: Genealogy researchJane: Clean up yard

We are both writers, so we both routinely have some short- and long-term writing goals. Check out Jane’s Wikipedia page! And if you aren’t already familiar, check out my books.

BTW, my own personal categories during the year are usually Home, Work, Self, and Others, as described in this blog post: The Chinese Menu Time Management Technique. During Virtual Winter Retreat I realized I needed to revise my goals and activities if I want to keep those same categories during retirement. And one day I worked on that. But your categories might be different, and the ones we elected to use during our retreat suited us both at the time.

Each afternoon

At 4 pm we convened for the following agenda:

Compare notes on what we accomplished that day. No need to dwell on what we did not accomplish.Our lists course-corrected naturally as we went along. And we weren’t working on things that required in-depth coaching.Watch up to 4 episodes of a TV show we’d picked together.We chose A Discovery of Witches on Netflix (and we finished, and enjoyed, all 3 seasons), but it could have been anything. A few previous favorites have been Deadwood, The L Word, Shameless, and Alone.Eat dinner.Sometimes we coordinated what we were eating, and sometimes we didn’t. For example, one night we both made snack boards and another night we both ordered Thai.

↑ ↑ My snack board incorporated a mini gouda wheel and mini Triscuits in the foreground. Jane’s design echoes the snowflakes on the tablecloth. (Or wrapping paper, or whatever that is — I was focused on the food and forgot to ask!)

After a week of this (Christmas Day to New Year’s Eve) we agreed we had both been productive and had fun, too!

It was a good way to end one year and set ourselves up for success in the next.

I suggested a Virtual Birthday Retreat, around the time of our late spring/early summer birthdays, and would be willing to do it quarterly. (Maybe not a whole week each time.) But Jane wants to do it more often and is welcome to do so with other friends, in whatever format suits them.

Jane’s thoughts:

It has been a great retreat. I am proud of what I got done and thankful to your support in every way. Also, several of my friends immediately said, “I want to do that!” I am boot camping with one and will be having a weekend retreat with another next month.

Ideas for creating your own Virtual Retreat:Call it whatever you want: Retreat; Boot Camp; etc. Words matter. They set the tone for what you want to accomplish and how you want to feel. A Boot Camp is generally stricter and has more well-defined goals than a Retreat.Invite whomever you want, or create a Solo event, ala this Literature and Latte blog post: How to Create Your Own Solo Writing Retreat. (Thanks to Julie Bestry for sharing this link with me and our other NAPO writing friends!)Make the focus whatever you want: Getting lots of little (but important) stuff done? Making progress on a big project? Pampering yourself and catching up with friends?Make it however long you want. 1 day minimum, but a week (like we did) is stretching it for most people and situations.Communication is key. Choose a platform for sharing your ideas and comparing goals/progress. Text -OR- Email -OR- Messenger. (OR phone -OR- Zoom -OR- etc.) It will drive everyone crazy, and be ineffective, to have the messages spread over multiple platforms.Decide how much money, if any, you want to spend. Will there be food? Will you try to coordinate it?Even if your retreat is business-oriented, and even if you are doing it solo, be sure and build in some fun. It doesn’t have to be TV! (Not that there’s anything wrong with a little Guilt-Free TV.)About participating in others’ virtual retreats

I have a couple of annual virtual events coming up that I did not plan. (I am just a participant.) The ones I am thinking of are the very public RootsTech genealogy conference and a private group Writing Retreat. They will be very different from each other, but they have one thing in common: I will enjoy them more, and get more out of them, if I give them my full attention.

How do I do that?

I reserve the days on my calendar and do not schedule other things on those days.I plan to be in a quiet, comfortable location for Zooming. (In my case I’ll just be home, on my laptop, at my desk.)I make sure I have easy or already-prepared meals on hand.

This allows me to enjoy the events as stress-free as possible.

 

Have you done something like this, or think you might?

Please share with us in the comments below!

______________________________________________________Hazel Thornton is an author, genealogist, and retired home and office organizer.
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