After a long shift, the place I head to is the rooftop of my apartment block in Ho Chi Minh City. I'm a nurse in a busy hospital, so my days can be really intense, and that roof has become my little escape.
It's a flat concrete roof, nothing fancy. Some of the neighbours grow chillies and herbs in old paint tins up there, and there's a water tank, a washing line and a couple of plastic stools that nobody seems to own. From the edge you can see across the rooftops to the river and the lights of the tall buildings downtown.
I go up there three or four evenings a week, usually around eight, after I've had a shower and something to eat. What I do there is really very little. I sit on one of the stools with a glass of iced tea, sometimes listen to a podcast, and sometimes just watch the planes coming in to land. Now and then one of the elderly neighbours is watering her plants and we have a short chat about nothing important.
The reason it works for me is that it puts physical distance between me and the day. At the hospital everything is urgent and people need me constantly. On the roof, nobody needs anything. It's higher than the street noise, there's usually a bit of a breeze, and looking at a wide view seems to make my problems feel smaller. I've also made a rule that I don't check my work messages up there. After half an hour I come back down feeling like a person again rather than a machine.