Tuesday, October 16, 2012

I need a vacation to recover from my vacation.

So, I took last week off work. (I'm lucky; I can do this.) It was meant to be a nice, quiet, stay-at-home vacation - a chance to get some rest, catch up on my reading, maybe play some video games, and get some writing done. Admittedly, there were also some useful/practical activities planned: sorting laundry, getting my car checked over, cleaning dishes, and like that.

The thing about vacations is that you're supposed to come out of them feeling relaxed and refreshed - or, possibly, tired but satisfied, in the wake of a particularly fun or interesting time. This time... not so much. I was exhausted when I went into the vacation, owing to the lovely game of Musical Diseases which has been a family pastime for waaaaaay too long now, and which finally caught up with me just as I started my shiny new vacation. And I'm just about that tired now; I think I slept about fourteen hours the night before last, and then another seven hours last night. It's not that I'm sick, exactly - it's more like I can't seem to completely recover from having been sick.

So, for most of my things-I-was-going-to-be-doing, what I actually accomplished was "some of it." Getting rest? Some of it. Catching up on my reading? Some of it. Playing video games? I started The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, so - some of it. Sorting laundry? Some of it. Getting the car checked out? Done, but now I'm waiting on a replacement for the catalytic converter, so - some of it. Sorting laundry? Some of it. Actually, most of it.

The big exception is writing. Writing requires uninterrupted time and unbroken energy - at least for me. Maybe there are people out there who can just keep plugging away at their writing projects, and get decent results. Personally, if I don't have enough energy, then it's hard to be enthusiastic about whatever I'm working on - and if I'm not enthusiastic about writing it, odds are it's not going to be very interesting to read. So I end up with basically two choices: work on little things (like blog entries) while I wait for my energy to come back, or else dig in and refuse to do anything except rest and relax until I have enough energy to write. The second option, unfortunately, generally means putting off things that really need to be done - laundry, for example - and is further complicated by the existence of two boys who really want to spend time with their Daddy and/or really need to be supervised.

Which is why my progress on my longer writing projects has totaled about three sentences over the course of this week.

And so but anyway, I think I need a vacation to recover from my vacation. (I'm not holding my breath.) Meanwhile, here's a picture of one of the more compelling distractions in my life:
You can see why he's compelling, right?

4 comments:

  1. Yep! I'd be distracted too :)

    NaNoWriMo is looming. I'm wondering if I should sign up again this year. Bear in mind, I've bombed the past five years or so...

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  2. Why is it sickness seems to always make an appearance during vacations? Drives me crazy when this happens. Even worse when you have little kids like you do.

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  3. BTW, how did the Mock Gathering go? Anybody actually show up?

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  4. In reverse order:

    Rhoadan: Aside from the fact that I was just barely rested enough to enjoy it, the Mock Gathering went fine - five people, plus the Beautiful Wife and the Boys. A couple of people who'd been planning to come couldn't make it, but as far as I know nobody actually got lost or reached the spot but couldn't find us. It wasn't terribly eventful, but it was fun to catch up with people in person. I'll probably do another one in January, though I need to rethink the logistics a little - the time frame was a little too long to have the boys in an area with no playground.

    Bruce: My personal theory was that I'd spent the previous three weeks thinking, I can relax when I get to my vacation, so I'll just muscle through this One More Thing to get there. And then when I got there, I didn't have anything left.

    Amanda: I've never actually signed up for NaNoWriMo. I don't know if it would help, or if it would just be frustrating/depressing.

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