What sounds better: 14 vacations or just one?
As the clock ticked down the last 48 hours until the start of my annual two-week summer vacation, my coworkers started asking the inevitable: Where was I going?
``Nowhere in particular," I replied. ``I plan to take day trips."
And just as familiar as their destination question was the look of sympathy that greeted my reply. My coworkers' pitiful glances and furrowed brows allowed me to read their minds: They think ``day trips" are to vacationers what ``consulting" is to the unemployed -- exercises in self-delusion or a sorry form of spin control.
After all who would forgo exotic locations, tales of debauchery (that stayed in Las Vegas), and the endless photographs that brag ever so subtly during the lunch break, ``My vacation cost more than yours"? To take vacation and not get out of Dodge? Unheard of.
However, the disbelievers couldn't be more wrong.
My two-week vacation spreads before me like a calm, pristine lake, and I do not want to glide across it, like a sailboat, in one fell swoop. I'd rather dog-paddle my way across, savoring each day and making each one count as its own separate minivacation.
For me, the advantages of 14 such vacations are clear.
The packing is for one day only. The only reservation required is the one for the library pass to a local museum. I can grocery shop like a European, leisurely shopping for food and wine early in the day, anticipating dining al fresco on the deck in the evening and finally getting to try all those Food Network recipes.
Because I'm not dependent on an efficiently packed suitcase, I can dive deeper than usual into my closet and dress as theatrically as I please. I can even coordinate my bag with my outfit, an effort comparable in magnitude to moving into a new house .
Rainy days don't mean ruined plans, only a shopping trip of mythical proportions. After all, monies not spent on the tourism industry can be spent on you-ism.
Best of all, rather than being tethered to a plan, I can see where the day's inspiration leads me -- whether it's to paint a landscape, mow a landscape, watch a Red Sox game, or hold a
To me, vacation doesn't get any better than this: Two weeks of what life would be like if I didn't have to work.
I'm writing this essay, you see, because I can. When on vacation, unencumbered time does not hover just out of reach: I can take it and shape it to my own personal muse. It's a far cry from how, after working all day, my creativity is sucked out of me, sort of like a right brain lobotomy, the remains of the day taken up with the rudimentary tasks of daily living.
Still, the idea of the day-trip vacation rankles the occasional coworker. I think it's because I'm not sequestered far away at some exotic location, incommunicado -- but am at home, within striking distance, so close and yet so far away. Those who never take time off themselves find it reproachable that you might be reachable by phone but yet aren't, due to vacation mores.
That's why one key to the day-trip vacation is to avoid contact with the workplace at all cost. No driving by your building or having drinks with your coworkers. Either one can elicit a conditioned response in your psyche that you're not really on vacation after all -- that, indeed, the whole plan was just a con job.
The day-trip vacation is worth your coworkers' disdain and the effort though. For afterward, you will return to the workplace relaxed, calm, and tan -- and not needing a vacation to get over your vacation.
Fully rested and recharged, you'll overhear coworkers discussing how best to pack up the entire house for a week at the beach or to stuff a carry-on suitcase for the security ordeal at the airport.
And you'll smile as remembrances of day-trip vacations dance in your head.
