I have this love hate relationship with work. I am either fascinated by it or I think I’m slaving away my mental energy in exchange for a salary. Most days I’m thrilled by the fact that I get paid to work on interesting projects, keep stimulated, and do it from anywhere– barefoot and in shorts. Other times, I whine like a pig in heat, envying those with enough mental energy to spend at the end of a long work day.

One day, I was in one of my more philanthropic moods, brooding over the fate of the world and how unfair it was to be paid so well for such fun work, when a colleague casually mentioned: “are you ever able to switch it off?”. I was perplexed and asked him to elaborate. He carefully pointed out, that by the nature of our work, we can never really turn off the mind. We’re renting out our brains in exchange for money. Good money, mind you, but there is a trade off.

I mean, every profession has its trade-offs. Teachers get 3 months off a year (sort of), but work for years on a laboring Ph.D, and are usually haunted by yearly self-evaluations, the constant grind for tenure, publishing, and dealing with idiots (ok, students wanting that extra 28%, when they haven’t been to class all year). MD’s on the other hand, work for less than minimum wage for 10-15 years, in exchange for a big paycheck, that when it arrives squarely in mid-life, they’re too exhausted to properly enjoy. So they work until they’re 90, coming home at the end of long days, to collapse in thankless exhaustion in a big house where everyone else seems to have finished off the filet mignon.

So yes, all professions have their issues. Some more than others. Pure computer scientists, on the other hand, spend day in and day out solving hard problems that are rarely similar to last year’s problems. So you can’t really cheat. Ok, maybe a little with Wikipedia and stackoverflow.com, but not much. Talk to the significant other of any self-respecting software developer, and you’ll hear stories of vacations spent with someone who spends long stretches of time with their neck cocked upwards, not looking at the sights, but contemplating how best to solve the problem they left back at the office last week. I mean, we do find a better balance with age, but the truth of the matter is that no matter how hard we work at a problem, no one is going to finish it off for us. That annoying problem is going to be in the same exact line of code you left it, when you logged off a month ago to trek through the Himalayas.

As my unnamed colleague said– they’re paying us to collapse in a mental heap at the end of hard days, with enough mental energy to watch a bad TV re-run, and put ourselves to sleep with a beer in our hand. There are no mentally stimulating hobbies for computer programmers at the end of a long work day. There may be hobbies on the rest/slack days, but not when you’re full on. It’s no coincidence that computer programmers start disappearing after middle age. We move up the management chain, retire, or end up teaching AP math at a local high school– anything but having to hack day in and day out and not being able to turn off. Ok, I’m exaggerating, but not by much. Truth be told, that is why I’m taking a leave of absence for which I am infinitely grateful. So… that’s how I ended up in an ashram in Cambodia, or the cultural equivalent for a geek traveling with two USB sticks with various Linux distributions and a Kindle containing an algorithms book.

A few weeks ago, I met a salsa teacher (yes, in Cambodia; yes, from Italy) who also worked as a yoga teacher in a local yoga & meditation retreat. After many hours of stepping on her feet (no, I can’t dance), we got to talking about yoga, meditation, the universe and everything else. And that’s how 3 days later, I ended up cross-legged in a paradise of a retreat, eating vegetarian food and trying to drink enough tea to make up for just one lousy missed cup of morning coffee (for the record, you can’t do it with green tea, but you do end up peeing all day, so plus one for clean kidneys).

The week went tumultuously funny, with the first day squarely concentrating on eating exquisite food, and the rest of the week spent contorting myself into previously unattainable postures, while exploring the inner workings of the endless chatter I call my mind. Unlike most people, I didn’t find the 2 one-hour meditation sessions to be frustrating. I thoroughly enjoyed the amusement park that is my head, and was not irritated at all by the endless static and entertainment. It may not be how it’s supposed to go, but I did get better as the days went by. After day number 3, there was a brief moment when I totally forgot about Jakub rejecting my patches, the GCC steering committee, and why C++ is the worst programming language in the world. That alone was worth the price of admission.

But seriously, if you haven’t done it, a meditation and/or yoga retreat for even a handful of days is something to seriously consider. It may not change your life as in, “I found God”, but it may change your life as in “OK, I’ve lost feeling in that leg forever”. The silence is breathtaking, inspiring, and can make a vacation (or staycation) truly restful.

If you ever find yourself in Siem Reap, Cambodia, and a break away from it all suits your fancy, do consider a wonderful place where the yoga instructors are from Italy and Venezuela, the cook is from Finland, the owner is French, and the guests are from Norway, Germany, and Puerto Rico. That place is Angkor Zen Gardens Retreat.

p.s. I didn’t stay forever. After all, there was a belly dancer show downtown for which I staged a coup d’état, and took everyone at the Yoga retreat to go see; and there was the slight detail of Star Wars Episode VII coming out the next day… in Cambodia!!! For $4!!!