I Hate Vacations
My dad always told me to do something I loved.
And generally, I have. Which means I’ve been lucky and I’ve had a pretty good time.
So I work. A lot. Because I like work.
And I’ve got a reputation for it.
But sometimes people tell me not to work so hard.
To relax and enjoy myself.
Take a break. Make sure I get a vacation.
They tell me that there are other things that life is about besides work.
Therapists have been particularly enamored of telling me this.
On your death bed, they say, you won’t wish you’d spent more hours at the office.
Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll think, shit, if I’d worked a little harder and made a little more money, I might’ve left something more for my kids.
Maybe I’ll think, Fuck, I really enjoyed working at that place, what the fuck was I thinking not doing more?
It really depends on what you do, doesn’t it?
Do you like what you do? Do you love the people you work with and for? Do you think the organization you’re clocking hours with is doing something worthwhile in the world?
The therapists don’t usually start there because the people who come to them come with anxiety and stress. You’re staying calm at the office and yelling at the kids when you get home. And they assume that what you do at the office is meaningless to you and you can’t see it.
They assume you don’t like it.
They assume you’d do something else if you could.
It doesn’t occurs to them in a true way that you might just enjoy it. You might actually love it.
That it’s simply life and being alive that’s stressful and anxiety producing and that there’s nothing you can really do about that. Except notice it and live with it because a vacation (or a meditation or a book or anything else you might think of) won’t keep you from avoiding it.
Plus, they think that what they do is really amazing. And it is. But not what I’d want to spend my life doing.
So anyway. That’s why I hate vacations. They’re based on that idea. That whatever you’re doing you don’t like and so you need to do something else for 2 weeks a year.
Or let me put it this way: If you’re doing something you dislike so much that you think 2 weeks a year doing something else will make it worthwhile, you should fucking quit your job.
