Several times throughout the years, I’ll take vacation time and go somewhere and do things. Despite the fact that I’m generally accomplishing things that I want to do on my vacation time, I don’t really feel like they’re really vacations in the sense that I’m completely relaxed and at a general state of ease and comfort.
When I go to a convention, there’s the agitation of constantly being in lines and being crammed with thousands of people at any given time; waits, more waits, lines and waiting in lines, the tedious procedure of trying to find a place to sit and eat lunch or dinner. When I go on ballpark trips, they’re usually not spent very long in any one place, and in order to maximize how much time gotten at each park, and there’s a lot of time spent driving around in cars trying to get from point A to B to C to D and then back to A sometimes. And then there are the unfortunate instances of having to use vacation time to go deal with family bullshit, where I feel like I need a vacation after each and every single day dealing with my parents’ separation.
And no matter where in the United States you go, there’s always a long line at Starbucks when all I really want is my morning cup of coffee.
Don’t get me wrong, aside from the family bullshit, I enjoy going on trips to go to conventions, baseball road trips, out-of-town weddings and other time-off-work excursions. I wouldn’t trade any of those things in for the world, but the fact of the matter is that more often than not, none of those things are truly restful, not-a-care-in-the-world, zero-worry, genuine vacations.
So I kind of want to go on an actual vacation, sometime.
The last genuine vacation I can say I was on was last year, when I went to Mexico with my friends from Canada. That was a vacation in the truest sense, because I was pretty disconnected from the outside world for a week; it was almost forced, because I was in another country outright, and I didn’t get any data down in Cancun.
But the thing is that I was almost in culture shock by being on vacation. It had nothing to do with the fact that I was in another country and people speaking English were much more sparse than it is in my everyday life in Atlanta, but more the fact that I had nothing to do, and didn’t really know what to do with myself. Eventually I adapted, and then I realized just how amazing an actual vacation was.
I slept until my body simply didn’t want to sleep anymore. I actually felt like jogging in the morning partially because it was something constructive, but also to make a feeble attempt to counteract all the rich food I’d been pigging out on, but it was nice to simply jog on foreign paths and fresh air. And then I would go pig out on rich food before spending the rest of the day soaking in the pool or beach, while reading campy books and drinking bloody marys.
The point is that I eventually found myself completely capable of relaxation, and I was almost completely devoid of all stress, anxiety and worry. I say almost, only because I was trying to spin some game with a cute girl I met before getting environmentally cockblocked by Mother Nature when a massive monsoon wiped out the only night I would’ve had a chance, and I was miffed about it for a few hours the following day after she had departed. But otherwise, I was sleeping and resting like a champ, eating rich and unhealthy food and not having to worry about any dishes or cleaning, and I was spending all of my leisurely time relaxing in pools or oceans while shooting the shit with good people while getting tanked on free booze.
And the best part? No fucking lines or waits anywhere. Especially for coffee. If I wanted good, South American coffee, all I had to do was saunter down to the lobby, sit at a table, and the attentive service staff would bring me cappuccinos until my bladder erupted.
Man, I don’t just want another vacation, but I want to go to a Latin American resort again. I want this experience again, and I want to be able to pick up and throw coconuts at any given time again.
