America's Leisure Gap

Enough with the 80-hour weeks. Event producer Josh Wood is finally taking a real vacation. He’s departing for all of August to travel through Spain, Italy, and Greece, and he’ll be unplugged from the phone and Internet the whole time.

Well, not completely unplugged. He did ask the staff at New York-based Josh Wood Productions to forward urgent messages to a special e-mail box. Wood says he wants to spend the month writing. Well, not exactly literature. He wants to open a gym in Manhattan and needs to draft a business plan. So, come to think of it, parts of his grand tour of the Mediterranean may end up resembling a day at the office, only with better scenery. Wood loves what he does. He also concedes that his inability to take an all-in vacation can seem “a little screwed up.”