Vacations

"We leave home tired; we come back exhausted."

That is from an article titled "Just Sit Back and Relax!" in The Time magazine talking about vacations in the US.

With a lot of my friends not too far from where I live, I have been spending a lot of weekends with them doing a lot of outdoor stuff. Like went skiing a couple of times, white water rafting, wine country tour, etc. This weekend, at the height of central California heat, we played tennis, went go karting, played basketball and then poker - all on the same day. Whenever visiting a place, it is very tempting to do as much as possible.

As the article alludes to, we work too hard towards relaxing. Yes I enjoyed every one of those weekends. I did lots of fun stuff I would probably not if not for my friends. Whenever we plan on a vacation, we invariably plan and try to do more than what could be realistically achieved, hoping to get more fun for the buck, only to end up tiring our self. And we try to call that vacation. Why do we do that?

A lot us like to beat the system by doing more in a shorter period of time - just like at work. We like to be efficient. But vacations are not work. They are not about efficiency, getting things done, checking things off a list. If you want to cover every attraction in NYC, don’t take a vacation. Go on a city exploration trip. Don't expect to come back charged. Expect to be exhausted.

That brings me to my favorite vacation spot - the city where I live. On a weekend, I am most relaxed at home or close to home. Not certainly the most enjoyable or fun filled weekend, but certainly the most relaxing. There is no pressure to visit a zillion places or do a million things. I can do as much or as little as I want.

Or better still, draw inspiration from Seinfeld and let our vacations be about nothing. It could be thoroughly enjoyable and relaxing, just like Seinfeld. But staying put, doing nothing could also sometime make us tired.