23rd Oct 2007

Vacation

Anne PThis weekend, my parents emailed to say they have made reservations for us to spend a week at the beach in March. I nearly jumped for joy, and had to fight the urge to start making packing lists and looking at maps for the best route to drive. Clearly it has been too long since our last vacation - it will have been almost 2 years.

Why does a yearly vacation feel so essential to me? Is it just a habit, because my family always took a summer vacation? My husband didn’t have regular vacations for most of his pre-me adult life - partly for financial/job reasons (most of his jobs weren’t the sort to offer many vacation days) and partly, I think, because his family never took many trips when he was growing up, so he didn’t expect it (though he’s quite into the idea now).

I find vacations to be very renewing, even when they are not entirely relaxing. It’s like the train of my life is picked up and dropped onto a different track for a week or two. Which is not to say that I go wild in Vegas or whatever. It’s just… ahhhhh. Not only is it a break from work, but also from the rest of daily life. Taking time off to stay at home isn’t the same.

Some folks I know are not into vacations - they don’t like to travel. Do they get this sense of relief and change of pace from something else? Or do they just not need it?

–Anne P

This entry was posted by Anne P on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 9:41 am and is filed under notes You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Vacation”

  1. October 23rd, 2007 at 9:43 am Ms. Theologian Says:

    Sometimes I find traveling to be exhausting as a vacation, particularly when I’ve had a terrible commute to a daily job or when I travel a lot for business. Other than that, I like vacationing away from home. :)

  2. October 23rd, 2007 at 2:01 pm GhostGirl Says:

    We found a few years that when we do take vacations, they are all about travelling to see family, which at least in our case is hardly restful, and also not about US. So, starting a few years before we moved here, we made a concerted effort to take our own, separate vacations. For instance, one Xmas, we went to Annapolis for a few days before driving to NY to stay with the family. It was wonderful.

    I do find that I prefer short, but more frequent vacations. It spreads it out throughout the year, and and there’s less make up work panic when we get back.

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