Creative Ninja Sigrid Viir and her Travel Companion Maarin Murky were sitting in an empty pool and inspecting their surroundings.

MM: The false vacationer… our first meeting happened via Roland Barthes’ essay “The writer on holiday” (1954), where he looks at writers as people who in the eyes of the bourgeoisie are false workers and can therefore only be false vacationers, who can be found reading books even on summer holidays at the beach. Barthes observed this almost 70 years ago, but how do we recognise this false vacationer today?

SV: False vacationer is someone, who works a lot and thus cannot really take time off, however, others see them as someone, who never works and only ever rests! For Barthes, this relates to certain professions, to creative lifestyle, but I feel by today, we have all reached that point. It is just that for some people, the job they do is not their calling but they nevertheless work in the rhythm of false vacationers. Work has become all-encompassing.

MM: Having researched the themes of work and vacationing in today’s world for a number of years, what have you learned so far? I always try to schedule “free time” in-between work and leisure and use it to run errands, maintaining important relationships etc. Leisure time should be the time, when I am not useful to anyone and I only do things I personally enjoy.

SV: I try to more consciously notice these borderline situations and be aware when I am working – and make time for myself to step away from it. In our culture, the first thing children get asked is “What do you want to be when you grow up?”. My parents never taught me to rest, perhaps they did not know how to rest either – resting is often associated with being lazy.
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