What days off are for

I once captioned a beach photo "saving lives Monday to Friday, chasing sunsets on our days off" — half joking, mostly not. Nursing is work I love, and it's also work that asks a lot of you. Somewhere in my first years on the wards I learned that the days off can't just be recovery. They have to be lived, properly, or the weeks all blur into one long corridor.

So the days off became small adventures. A whole June day across the country in Galway — the Salthill prom, the diving tower, the big wheel, and a sunset that refused to end.

A January evening walking through a garden made entirely of light, because the darkest month deserves the brightest outing. An afternoon in Westeros, an hour up the road. An autumn morning in the Botanic Gardens, where I stood under a red maple and understood exactly why people write poems in October.

None of it is grand. That's the secret, I think. You don't need a far-away holiday to feel like your life is happening — you need a free day, someone good to share it with or a bench to yourself, and the willingness to go anyway, even when the forecast says you shouldn't.

The forecast here always says you shouldn't. Go anyway.