Thursday, May 22, 2008

Man, I Need a Vacation

Title says it all. I've really been feeling run down the last few weeks, both physically and emotionally. I was vaguely it's been a while since I took some time off, but I've been so busy lately that I hadn't really had any time to stop and think about just how long it's been since I had real, true downtime. Well, today I sat down with a calendar and started looking back, and i realized that the last time I had a day off where I wasn't booked to do some other activity (side work, tournaments, training clinics, birthday parties, or packing to travel the next morning, for example) was...

February. February 20th, to be exact. When I realized that, after months of work/life/training/holiday-related frenzy I had to take a day off to just recharge with my family.

So, in other words, it's been over 3 months since I had a day where I really just chilled out. And that last one was one i made myself take because it had been about 3-4 months since I'd had any downtime. So, that's what... 2-3 days of chill-out time in about half a year?

No wonder I'm moody mess.

Anyway, the good news is this weekend looks to be fairly devoid of work/life demands. I'm taking both Friday and Monday off, and we have no specific plans aside from seeing the new Indiana Jones flick with our friends Bill and Lacey on Saturday night. I'll probably invite some folks over to BBQ on Sunday, but otherwise this looks to be a fairly non-active few days.

Even training will be scarce. We don't even have class on Saturday as the dojang is close dfor the Memorial Day holiday. I'll still train at least 1 day this weekend -- if I don't train every couple of days I get antsy and edgy, so skipping training for the weekend would probably make it harder for me to enjoy myself -- but I'll be able to just head to the dojang and work out whenever I feel like it, as opposed to us having to corral the kids and get everyone suited up and in the car by 10:00 on Saturday morning. So, that'll be nice. But frankly, it's not the break I really need. I'll catch my breath, sure, but I really need to get away for at least a few days and just disconnect from the demands of the humdrum.

Christine and I had Big Plans for the past two years or so to do a trip to Rome, but my career instability last year coupled with the pathetically weak dollar have pretty much scotched that idea for at least another year or two (barring winning lottery tickets, of course -- can anyone spare one?). We briefly toyed with the idea of heading to Bali -- I was 1000% into it and terribly excited by the idea of my first international trip being to the other side of the world, but Christine's safety concerns (due to the State department's warnings) caused us to nix that one as well. Frustrating, but understandable.

We've since retreated to just sort of planning to "go away" with no specific dates or destination in mind. We've juggled Aruba, Bermuda, St. Maarten, and even more pedestrian locations like Jamaica or Grand Bahama around, but haven't really settled into anything yet. Basically, we've agreed that we want to go somewhere warm, sunny, with water, and food, and wine, and massages. Outside of that, we're pretty easy. We just want time away to recharge and reconnect a bit. So now we just have to pick a window of time where we can get my in-laws to visit and stay with our kids, and we'll just go shopping and see what trips are appealing and within our budget.

But honestly, at this point, I think I'd check into a Motel 6 and read a book for 4 days, as long as it meant I could get some rest.

Mood: Run Down
Now Playing: Barenaked Ladies, "Snacktime"

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