Remembering how to vacation

posted by Jeff | Friday, May 8, 2015, 11:59 PM | comments: 0

Yeah, I'm writing about vacations again. I'm obsessed thinking about it lately because a) I'm starting to feel a little bit of burnout because I've been going at it pretty hard this year, and b) I need to take off 12 days before the end of the year or risk losing some accrued time. So far I can only account for three or four. What I really want is a solid week, I'm just not sure where in the year that happens.

As I've said before, it's easy to forget what vacations look like when you live in Orlando. Tonight, we finally got out as a family to Magic Kingdom, which is something we haven't done in at least six weeks. It's hard when Simon has school and Diana has evening work. We're doing a lot of stuff this weekend as a unit. In any case, we ended up at the Polynesian Resort for some Dolewhip (my version of crack), and got to talking about how expensive the rooms are there. That got me to thinking about the hotel on Kauai from our honeymoon (in actual Hawaii!), and it brought back the feelings of what a true vacation feels like.

I have a surprisingly straight forward list that describes what it means to vacation for me:

  • Disconnection from your regular life.
  • People taking good care of you (admittedly, not the stuff of adventure travel).
  • A certain degree of gluttony and just-short-of-binge drinking.
  • Being with your favorite people.

As we were walking through the Poly, I realized that criteria is what made our series of cruises so much fun. Those little three-nighters consistently cover the criteria, they're just not long enough.

All of these short trips are great, and they help you recharge a little, but now I'm seeing that I need something a little longer. Two years ago, I had that time built in between me leaving the contract gigs and moving down here. With no intention of changing jobs, I need to be more, uh, intentional. That smart ass girl from the MasterCard commercials is stuck in my head... "They're paid vacation days!"


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