“If some people didn’t tell you, you’d never know they’d been away on a vacation.”
– Kin Hubbar
Vacation is a time of peace and relaxation meant to give you a break from the day to day. So how is it Thursday already?
I have been off from my day job since last Friday, but all things considered, I have been busier than I am during a normal work day. One thing has lead to another which has lead to another which has lead me to the final two days of my vacation feeling short of sleep, and without having accomplished anything on the list of what I had planned to do.
Looking back on vacations throughout my life they seemed to be full of constant events. Rather than relaxation, they have been a constant stream of activities, odd or otherwise. Especially the family vacations when I was growing up.
There was the world’s deepest hand dug well in Greensburg, KS. We bought a penny for well over one cent after throwing our own penny down into the well.
There was Albert, the world’s largest bull in Audobon, IA. By world’s largest bull, I actually mean a concrete replica of a bull. The graffiti on his nuts was quite possibly the most entertaining part of this attraction.
That isn’t to say that all our journeys were so uneventful. There was the trip to New Mexico. I got into a fight with my sister, and as punishment, we both had to write essays about the trip. The true punishment was probably that we made the trip in a Chrysler Le Baron. Not exactly the roomiest of cross-country travel vehicles, but cars like that, with a trailer full of camping supplies took us anywhere within driving distance, including over mountains that made me worry we might not be able to cross.
My dad likes to stop at every attraction and historical marker a long the way. There are some duds, like the ones I already mentioned, but there were some pretty cool stops, as well. The Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend, IA was beautiful. The city of Santa Fe was full of things I had never seen before. Everything had a story behind it.
The trips were sometimes fun, sometimes boring, sometimes more stressful than daily life, but all in all, they were a big part of my life. Maybe vacation is less about relaxation and more about pressing reset, temporary suspension of the every day. I took the week, in part, to work on my screenplay for Script Frenzy. So far, in five days, I managed five pages.
Still, it has been a good week, one that was necessary in many ways. I’ll see how many pages I can crank out in the next few days, and then go back to the office on Monday. It will be good to get back, it will be sad to go back, but it will be temporarily new. Sometimes, that is all you can ask.
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