Vacation

I'm back from a week-long vacation and it seems too short. I've been thinking about vacation (which ties into the idea of Sabbath and rest very directly) and realizing that there are different kinds of vacations:

1) The "doing stuff" vacation - e.g. Disneyland
2) The "doing nothing" vacation - no plans, no destinations
3) The "Going somewhere, doing whatever" vacation - go to Victoria, do whatever strikes your fancy

I'm sure there are other permutations, but in terms of actual rest, 2 gives the most followed closely by 3 (travel reduces the rest factor) and finally 1. My vacation was almost entirely of the "Do stuff" variety. Travel to San Diego, go to Sea World, go to the Aquarium, go to the zoo, see friends. One thing that did give some respite was Avi's daily naps which afforded us 3 or more hours of relative quiet each day. Still, we were in a hotel room with Avi waking up between 6:30 and 7:00 every day, followed by getting ready to go out, eating breakfast and off to some destination. Just when you think you might avoid the alarm clock, there's one sleeping in the crib right next to your head. (Don't get the wrong idea, I quite cherished the extended time with my son - I just prefer it start a little later in the day.)

As I have gotten older 2 and 3 have become more and more appealing, which makes sense. During my school years I had 3 months every summer of no plans and no destinations. Doing stuff was a welcome punctuation to the lazy days of running around with my friends doing whatever it was kids did that particular summer.

Now, I work five days a week with no extended break. Vacation is therefore a welcome time to do very little. A "do something" vacation affords little rest since there is still a schedule, still things that must get done with an artificial urgency and leaves no time for actual rest. Additionally, these vacations tend to be in very crowded areas and I tend to need some sense of solitude to rest, so that makes for an additional complication to finding needed rest.

Despite all these things, my vacation was good and enjoyable, just not as restful as it could have been. I suspect that with the onset of children, vacation is never really same. A deliberate attempt will have to be made to find rest where it can be found and to simply enjoy doing the things that we will be doing. Now I'm just looking forward to that next day off.