Vacation is an interesting concept that I’m often told I don’t understand. And I don’t, in the traditional sense. Even when I was a kid, every vacation I ever went on required that I get up at a decent time, run all over the place doing or seeing “stuff”, falling into bed dead tired at night, and coming home just to jump right back into daily life. I stopped wanting to travel on vacations a long time ago, because it’s just so much work...more work than just everyday living. Yes, I love to see and do new things, but my idea of a true vacation would be sleeping late, doing as little as possible for the rest of the day, maybe seeing one or two attractions and enjoying some sort of entertainment late into the night. Aside from my husband, I don’t know anyone else who is content with that sort of vacation and we rarely have the money to travel...and it’s far more difficult than it should be for us to actually go on vacation by ourselves. For some reason, we always have people wanting to tag along (friends/family) and one of my dogs needs special care, so it’s easier to just not go for the most part. Occasionally we get away for a weekend, but it’s pretty rare.

Most people I know plan a big trip and then spend the whole time trying to make the most of wherever they went, wearing themselves out completely before dragging their butts back to work. That’s not a vacation to me, that’s just working hard at something else for a week.

So I generally prefer to take vacation time from work at home, using the time to sleep in later than I normally would and get caught up on household stuff that I normally have to work on around work. Every year my husband and I both take the week before our Halloween party off to finish up decorations and preparations for the party. It’s a working vacation, but fun because we’re doing something we enjoy (and we sleep in/stay up late).

This year I’d planned to take a week off in the summer to just read and write, but that wasn’t in the cards due to a lot of unplanned work stuff. When I finally got to take a week off this past week, there was a whole bunch of things to deal with, because it’s fall, and fall is our busiest time of the year (not to mention we have a ton of house projects going on right now that need attending too – a fluke that would normally not be the case). So rather than spending my vacation from the day job writing, I spent most of it dealing with house stuff and doctor appointments and a crazy schedule that didn’t allow much time for relaxing. Which is fine, I guess, but I do sort of wish now that I’d just worked through fall, since all the stuff I did would have eventually gotten taken care of anyways, and I could have taken a week off in the winter when things aren’t so hectic.

The two things I really wanted to do was get ahead on my blog serials, and finish revising my next novel. I didn’t accomplish either of those, so I kind of feel like the whole week was just wasted. Live and learn, I guess. Though I did really enjoy being at home, and doing my daily writing time in the afternoons in my own quiet office with no distractions. That part was absolute bliss for an hour or so every day.

In any case, it’s back to the day job tomorrow, back to my comfortable routines, and back to the 6am alarm clock that I hate with every fiber of my being.

All this to say, I may not understand vacations, but neither does anyone who runs around like crazy trying to fit a year’s worth of sight seeing into one week. We just spend them differently, is all...and most of us work way too hard at it, no matter what we happen to have planned.