I don’t know how to go on vacation without some really, really specific prompts. And this year, thanks to some family business my lovely bride had to take care of, I was on my own for six weeks. We’re in week six of this “vacation” and here’s a table of things done, and not done:
| Did on Vacation | Didn’t on Vacation |
| Spent a week negotiating a contract | Camping |
| Attended a union meeting in Terrace | Personal development |
| Rode bicycle 200 km in the dark | Swam at the beach |
| Helped run a provincial championship bike race | Worked on my novel |
So yeah, good vacation!
I kid. First, union-related matters don’t count as actual vacation time, just time I wasn’t in the office. And I enjoyed the things I did very much (Except maybe one part where I threw myself into the ground very hard, that I could have done without). I wanted to do more of many things (most notably the motorcycle project) but we all make the choices we make.
On the gripping hand, I do feel it’s really important, at least for me personally, to structure a vacation as a proper away-from-the-house retreat from ordinary business. Otherwise, I don’t really get much of that rest-and-recharge experience that makes a good vacation so lovely.
This is probably a meta-point: I like to say that there are people who for some reason get into a lot of bar fights, and there are people who avoid the bars that have bar fights. It’s not that you can’t theoretically make a staycation work, but there’s a lot of value in the simple physical act of running away from your standard location, and the attendant default behavior, not to say ruts.