Two Different Views of Vacation

Back in January, when I returned to work after a week’s vacation in Florida, people bombarded me with questions: “Did you rent jet skis?” “Did you go para-sailing?” “Did you jog on the beach?” “Did you use the hotel gym every morning?” The answers to these questions were: “No,” “Are you insane?” “Oh, you’re funny,” and, “What’s a gym?”

It dawned on me that people have two very different views of vacation. Some folks think vacation is an opportunity to do all sorts of adventurous activities that aren’t normally available at home. These people fill each vacation day with so much stuff, their daily schedule is as busy as a presidential candidate visiting a primary state, except with more opportunities to get injured.

If I took that approach to my vacation, when I returned home from vacation I would need a vacation.

Other people, like me, have the opposite view of vacation. We see it as an opportunity to actively engage in the one thing that is not possible to do the rest of the year: nothing. To folks like me, vacation is the once-a-year chance to relax, do nothing, think about nothing, and find out if it’s really true that moss will grow on a human being if he stays motionless for seven days straight.

Here are questions my co-workers should have asked me: “How many naps did you take?” “How many times did you go in the hot tub?” and, “How many times did you eat out at a restaurant?” The answers are: “Six,” “Fourteen,” and, “I can’t count that high.” (“I can’t count that high,” also is the answer to the question: “How much weight did you gain?”)

Now, I understand that some people will point out that if you’re going to do nothing during vacation, you might as well do nothing at home and save all the money spent on air fare, rental car, hotels, and over-priced tourist trap restaurants. However, I’ve tried that in years past, and it doesn’t work. First, outdoor pools and hot tubs are not quite as enjoyable in Connecticut in January as they are in Florida in January. Call me a wimp, but going outside in my bathing suit when it’s 16 degrees is not my cup of tea.

More importantly, when you vacation at home with the desire to do nothing for a week, it lasts about half a day. At home, all those zillions of chores and projects you’ve been putting off are staring you in the face. And you can’t use the excuse that you have to go to work tomorrow so it wouldn’t make sense to start a project now. A little voice in the back of your head keeps saying, “C’mon, you should paint the bedroom. There’s plenty of time.” Or, “C’mon, you should fix that squeaky step on the stairs.” Or, “C’mon, now is the perfect time to replace the kitchen faucet that drips.” (On second thought, that little voice may not be coming from the back of your head, it may instead be coming from across the breakfast table.)

Also, vacationing at home means you are dangerously close to your place of work. It’s a sure bet that at some point during the week a co-worker will call and plead, “Can you please come in — just for a few hours — and help us fix this problem? Please?!!” That scenario does not happen when you’re out of state. 

So, although some of my co-workers were puzzled that my vacation goal was to do nothing, when I returned to work I was refreshed and raring to go. And that gung-ho attitude lasted quite a while this year — almost half a day.