I am coming to the end of a long awaited vacation. It's been somewhat of a working vacation. I'm preparing for a move & this has been serving as a test trip. I need to be sure that my new hometown would welcome a resident "Goddess of Joy" to conduct local workshops. I am happy to report that I have been welcomed with open arms!
There's an old joke: A guy goes on vacation and leaves his cat with his brother. The first night he calls his brother to check on the cat. Bro #1: "How's Boots?" Bro #2: "The cat died." Bro #1 "What?! I can't believe you told me like that!" Bro #2: "What do you mean?" Bro #1: "You should have broken it to me more gently. The first day you say the cat's on the roof and you can't get it down and so on. So, by day three or four you break the news that the cat died." Bro #2: "I'm sorry" Bro #1: "That's okay. How's Mom?" Bro #2: "She's on the roof and we can't get her down."
Social media has made it so that within minutes of things happening, we can already know. I'm not really sure that this is a good thing. If something really disturbing has happened, something that you can't do anything about...would you really want to know while you're on vacation? The point of vacation is to get away from the day-to-day things in your life. It's supposed to be somewhere else that has nothing to do with the everyday. If you know about these things before you get back, you could end up ruining the rest of your time worrying about the things that you can't do anything about.
A vacation is like sleep for your psyche. When you sleep, your body has time to repair all of the things that you've done to it all day. Your body is able to make repairs, replenish, prepare for the next day. Vacation is like that, but for your psyche. You take time out from your "real life". You go to places you've never been or don't get to visit often. You eat out more, even if you're staying in a vacation home or with friends. You probably won't do laundry. You smile more and just look for ways to enjoy yourself.
I, of course, am of the mind that treating yourself to a "vacation Tuesday" is best(more on this later). However, a less frequent option is usually what we can hope for. This is my first vacation in almost 4 years.
I have to say I felt very resentful not being able to take one in the last 4 years. Just the act of getting on the plane, on my way to my own adventure had me decompressing. I sat where I don't like to sit on the plane. The guy next to me engaged in conversation when I was just going to listen to music. I had considerably less money to spend than I originally intended. I didn't have any indication that the tentative plans I had were going to pan out. But, I had such a sense of peace & excitement simultaneously that none of it mattered. I was on vacation! Woot! Woot!
If you are one of those people that likes to plan every detail on your vacation, I'm going to invite you to stop. I say, definitely come up with some ideas of what you would like to do. However, vacation is an opportunity to break away from your everyday activity, one of which is over-scheduling every moment of your life. As someone that has done a good deal of traveling for both business & pleasure, when I let go of the need to control every minute of my time and just enjoy, I felt free! I didn't get to do many of the things that I had come up with. Some was weather, some was changing to do things with my hosts and some was just not feeling like jumping up and running around. It was very freeing to just give myself the extra lounging time.
As I said, I'll be moving here. So it was easy to just say I can do it when I move back. But, what was really going on was my desire to just luxuriate in the bliss of not having any "have to's". There was nothing I had to do. Nothing pressing on my time, it was all within my control.
Back to "Vacation Tuesdays"...when I was a kid, sometimes my family would just get in the car and go stay in a hotel. A couple of times, it was just up the road from our house. I invite you to try something like this. Choose a day a couple of months out, make a hotel reservation and save for it. Chances are you can find a pretty reasonable place since it's close to your house. If you don't have much more than the money for the room, pack food from home & treat yourself to breakfast, usually the cheapest meal. Lie by the pool, go for a walk, take a nap...tell people you'll be out of town for the weekend so they won't be tempted to bother you with garbage. Tell a couple of people where you are in case of an emergency, but inform them it really must be something that can't wait 48 hours.
You'll feel renewed, rejuvenated and relaxed. Just what a vacation is supposed to do...don't wait 4 years.
Until next time...joyfully yours,
Robyn
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