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?