You know how you always say, “MAN. I NEED a VACATION.”
Yeah. I don’t say that. Something is wrong with me.
When I hear people talk about vacations, I suddenly get tense. My back gets all twisted in knots, my pulse accelerates, and I try to change the subject as quickly as possible.
Nope, I never had some traumatic experience on a family vacation. Actually, I can count the number of REAL vacations I’ve ever had in my life on one hand.
The reason for me associating vacations with stress is this…All I can think about is how I won’t be able to get anything done! And THEN I’ll come home and there will be SO much to do! What makes anyone think they can go somewhere beautiful when there is SO MUCH WORK to be DONE?!
Let me set up the scene for you: the green wording represents my internal dialogue. This is where the whole vacation thing all came up.
Dillon – Let’s go on vacation!
Casey- Oh. Really? (There has GOT to be a way out of this. He doesn’t really mean it. Maybe he’s just saying we need to try something different…like going out on Tuesday nights or eating leftovers or going on a nice walk or..something).
Dillon – Yeah. When do you have some free time?
Casey – *staring blankly* (FREE TIME!? IS he CRAZY?? I don’t HAVE FREE TIME. I’m an actor for God’s sakes. Back in college, David Alan Stern used to always say “You need a forty hour non-acting job to support your 20 hours a week of honing your craft and 20 hours a week of auditioning.” Um..that’s an 80 hour work week! Of which you only actually get paid 40 hours. Ew.)
Casey – Um. Later this year? (this was early summer btw).
Dillon – OK. When?
Casey – How many days? (He’s going to make me pick a date. I can’t believe this is happening)
Dillon – two weeks?
Casey – Nope. (!!!!!)
Dillon – OK. How long?
Casey – Five..days? (Maybe I should have said a week to sound more like a normal person. But I wonder if I can make this a weekend thing instead…hmmm)
At this point Dillon throws around a bunch of dates until we settle upon a five day stretch in October.
Dillon – Where do you want to go?
Casey – I don’t know. Where do you want to go? (Please don’t say a tropical place, please don’t say a tropical place. What if all I can do is waste my time worrying about home? Why do people want to go to tropical places anyway!? Isn’t it kind of a mental torture? IT IS NOT REAL LIFE!! I refuse to go anywhere warm. At least England or France has art and dirty cities and cloudy skies).
Dillon – How about the Caribbean?
Casey – Um. YEAH. COOL! (I hope I sounded excited.)
Soon after we researched (THAT I can do) the best places to go, and after speaking to all of our traveler friends, we decided Aruba would be a good place to vacate..to.
To be honest, I couldn’t even get myself excited about the trip because i was so busy with work and other plans. But finally the day arrived. We shut off data to our phones and I didn’t check my email AT ALL the entire trip. It was flipping gorgeous. We did nothing but walk on the beach and eat delicious food and drink pina coladas. And something happened…I started to…relax. I said things like “Wow Dillon my back isn’t all tense…and I didn’t even need to do yoga to feel that way!”
Sure it was an amazing trip and YES I realize I had the whole idea of vacations completely wrong. But I think the best thing I got out of the trip is how I need to balance work with fun time. Obviously my career is awesome and I get to be creative and well…have fun all the time. But sometimes you need to rest and explore and travel and eat good food and try new things and NOT THINK to allow all that creativity to cultivate.
So guess what? I’m actually looking forward to my new plan of “I get one day a week to do no work and not check my email.” Oh. And my next vacation, too. 🙂
Casey McDougal 