I’ll probably get slapped for saying this, but I’ve been slapped for far worse: I hate vacations.
I should of course qualify that statement: I hate vacations that consist of simply “time off from work”. Because then, what vacations function as is a good ol’ fashioned “catch up on sleep” which is all well and good, but after 5 days, you start to go a little stir crazy.
Now, in the interest of full disclosure: I did originally have some plans this weekend, but they fell apart around a month ago, and I already had the vacation time locked off, so I found myself through no real fault of my own stuck with a 5-day reprieve from the Land O’ Cubicles. Couldn’t re-assign the time, and really, didn’t have any inclination to do so: it’d been three months without any significant time off and I was looking forward to it.
Course, I forgot: I hate vacations.
Let’s analyze two ways in which I despise having time on my hands. Strap yourself in, this should be a fun ride.
Reason #1) I shouldn’t be allowed a free hour, nevermind 120 consecutive ones.
I’m sure they invented depressants for people such as myself, but the bottom line is, I just think too darn much, as exemplified by the fact I just published a 110,000 word tome of last year’s writing, and that only accounts for 1/3rd of what I actually wrote. Early 1980's Stephen King wasn’t that prolific. Shoulda called the book “Blog and Peace”, or “Les Blogerables”. And now I’ve had both living grandparents call and give me the “I’m sure if I understood a word of this, I’d think it was great. And what’s this part about you bragging that you were getting laid on February 10th? Ryan Thomas!”
(Ack. The middle name. You know you're in trouble when elder relatives break out the middle name. It's the familial version of being read your Miranda rights.)
So I think a lot. Usually, this poses no problem, in that my daily regiment allows me to focus such activities into ways that are theoretically beneficial to the common good. Except for the part where I groove to the Black Eyes Peas on the treadmill. That helps nothing but my waistline and my libido. Good lord, that girl is smoking. And yes, it’s a week since, and I still haven’t gotten over it. Chalk it up to the fact that February 10, 2003, seems like the exception, not the rule. And remind me not to publish this entry for the 2005 version of the blog book. Sorry, Nana.
When you’ve got five days largely to yourself, and you’ve got a hyperactive brain, you’re consistently using your cerebellum to unproductive ends. You make up scenarios, you replay bad memories, you think of all the things you should be doing if you could only be bothered to get out of your pajamas. But instead, you plop in the next DVD in the “Buffy” Season 5 collection, even though you know how it’s all gonna end, because the options are so limitless that it’s severely limiting.
In college, there were roughly a dozen theatres of different shapes and sizes. Everything from a basement room to a fully-automated professional stage. I lit pretty much every stage there was to light there in my not-so-brief time. Budding light designers would always ask me what space they should try to light first. They were often surprised when I told them the Agassiz Theatre, which was the second largest space on campus. The thing about this space was the fact that there were only a limited number of places to hang lights. Only a few basic type of lighting arrangement that would make sense. The variables, as such, were few. And this, I felt, made a newbie designer’s job as easy as can be. Still difficult, to be sure, but unlike those spaces where your choices were literally limitless, easier.
Its’ really easy to make choices in our daily lives without even thinking about them, because so few are really choices per say. More “best options available”. To go to work is not a choice. To wake up at 7 or 7:30 am, however, is. To take the Red Line to the Orange Line as opposes to the Green Line is an option more than choice. I can’t choose to go to work anymore than I can choose to pay my rent or my phone bill or my student loans. But I can choose to call that girl, make plans with these friends, send out a writing sample to an editor who doesn’t know my name. And those choices can be more than slightly unnerving.
When compound these potential choices with my brain and this much free time, it’s even harder. Obligation; that I can handle. It's deciding what will make me, well, me; that's a bit harder to grasp.
Reason #2) I’ve got this whole “debt” thing that “cramps” my “style”.
People will get on my case tomorrow at work when I tell them that I spent five days by and large doing nothing. They’ll say it was a waste, that I should have gone somewhere, that I should have done more things.
Which is all fine and good except I have no money.
OK, I have money, but I did this incredibly new technique called a “budget” and found out…wait, you’ve heard of it too? No way! I thought I was the only one who knew about this…I mean, I heard about it on the Internet and…wait, around forever? What do you mean?
Oh. That’s humbling.
So, point of the matter is, yes, I could have dipped into some savings, could have given out those credit card numbers to Priceline or Orbitz, and had myself a merry ol’ adventure. And the thought was there and tempting and maybe in a few weeks I’ll give and look at my willpower this time around and kick a kitten. Who knows?
It’s an interesting experience, this whole “living in perpetual debt”. You can usually accept the fact that you owe someone you don’t know a significant portion of your future earnings, but every once in a while, you snap and rail against interest rates, and impulse buys, and pull at your hair muttering things like, “Did I really need a higher education?” And you either say “Screw it, I’m in debt so debt that another $400 can’t possibly hurt”, which has been my basic mode of operation, or you say, “Hrm. Maybe there’s a pattern here.” Took me until just a few weeks ago to recover financially from the one-two-three punch of Nashville/New York/Christmas, and while someplace warm, tropical, and drinks-served-in-coconuts laden sounds loverly, my Visa statement next month might send a bit of a chill back down my spine.
It’s always a tricky balance, working that whole “save money” thing versus the “ok, you have some fundage finally, but you’ve spent the last month alone in your house without the electricity on eating soup directly from the can”. Lately, I’ve been going out on a regular basis for the first time since, oh, ever. But I can’t go out all the time, which is frustrating, but maybe someday I won’t worry about each $40 withdrawal from the ATM. Sounds like I’m whining, cuz, well, I am. Not like I have a terminal illness or nuttin’, but it’s a nice little pit in the stomach nonetheless.
That money, that $40 or whatever it may be, is buying me lasting memories with coworkers and their friends. And yes, money spent towards trips could be spent in a similar fashion, it’s true. But there’s no place I’d rather be lately than with these people in the beginnings of whatever this part of my life is. It’s been one giant shake of the “Ryan Life As Etch A Sketch” lately. The first lines are being drawn back in, one day at a time, one night at a time, one bar at a time, one drink at a time, one secret at a time, one laugh at a time.
Right here in Boston. I didn’t have to go very far to find what I was looking for. Just had to adjust the focus a touch. Happens to all of us, from time to time. Looking at things without seeing them, until suddenly they are drawn into sharp relief. And hey, I could be wrong about all this. After all, look at my near monthly declarations of sudden insight. Smoke and mirrors. This might be the same.
But it might be different.
In either case, we’re all in the funhouse, in the end.
Posted by Ryan McGee at February 17, 2004 11:39 PM