On Vacation

It's the final day before vacation, and I have a ton to do. Since I'm treating this like a real "day job" vacation, I'm starting to think that one of the reasons a vacation seems so relaxing is the contrast with the last day in the office before you leave, when you're desperately trying to get everything done. Today I need to proofread the last 85 pages of the book, send some stuff to the person handling the electronic publishing with my agent and complete the author publicity questionnaire for my new publisher. Then I have some errands to run and I need to get the house in quasi-company condition for a TV watching marathon this evening.

I think vacation is one of the downsides of being self-employed. On the one hand, you can generally take off whenever you like, but that tends to mean you never get around to taking off. You're more likely to just go on light duty, where you're still dealing with the day-to-day stuff but not pushing yourself to do major projects. As a result, you never really get out of the "work" mindset, and since you're home all the time, trying to take a "staycation" means you don't really shake up your routine. In this case, I'm making a conscious effort to truly be away from work for a week, even in the part of the week when I'm at home. That's why I'm frantically trying to finish up everything today.

Even when I had a regular job, I wasn't good about taking vacations. I used my vacation time to go to writing conferences. There was one time in the mid 90s when I took a long weekend to go to the Renaissance Festival near Houston. I drove down on Friday, spent that day driving around the national forest nearby and went shopping at the outlet mall, then spent Saturday at the fair and drove home Sunday. And then there was a trip to England in 2000. Otherwise, my major trips have involved visiting friends, which doesn't have quite the same effect as a real vacation, or scheduled events. I've never done a "relaxing" vacation that wasn't really about going and doing a lot of stuff. We'll see how this works for me or if I get twitchy. I'm planning to do a lot of reading, but I'm not sure what I'm in the mood to read. There may be a library or bookstore trip next week.

I may do some Facebook updates during the week, but part of the vacation will be no keeping up with a work schedule, so I won't be posting any blogs until Nov. 3. Then I will make a full report (of the things I want to share). Now off to go do some proofreading. See you in a little more than a week!