Things I Learned From My Vacation

Last week, the husband and I went on our first vacation in four years. We didn’t plan a large vacation, not like our last one in which we went to Colorado, or the one before that which we spent in Acapulco. Our funds were much more limited this time so we stayed close to home.

Vacation took us to Lost Valley Lake Resort in Owensville, Missouri, a town a short distance from where we live. Our in-laws have a timeshare with Lost Valley so we were able to get a week there for free, which was a huge plus in deciding to spend our vacation there! Lost Valley Lake Resort doesn’t have that much to do so we knew that we would be spending a decent amount of our free time in Hermann, Missouri, an awesome little winery town about thirty minutes from the resort.

This isn’t an article about saving money on vacation, I’ll write that one another day, it isn’t even really about frugal living much at all. What surprised me more than anything was my reaction to our vacation, and my reactions made me think. Here is what I learned from my vacation.

I need to take more vacations. Seriously. It took me two full days just to begin to relax. I work from home so the only real difference between a week day and a weekend is whether the hubby is home or not, other wise I pretty much work whenever. I have been trying to separate my life into a work week and a weekend away from the computer but it doesn’t always work that way. Actually taking a vacation in which we go somewhere away from home forced me to quit working, even if the quitting thinking about work is farther out of reach.

I have an addiction to my computer. My computer has been rather slow lately and my CD drive was no longer reading CD’s. Since we were leaving for a week I decided that was the perfect time to take my computer in and get it looked at. I thought way to much about my computer and work over vacation. I missed reading the news and looking up something I had a question about, checking my emails and knowing what was going on with my websites (nothing was going on that couldn’t wait or my mom couldn’t handle but it didn’t matter). The first thing I did when we got home was  pick up my computer. I felt like I had finally got my fix. I realize it adds to my inability to relax as I am always pushing more information into my head through its little screen. It may have been better if the Area Rug website wasn’t in the middle of a complete overhaul and I was missing meetings but I’m pretty sure I would have felt the disconnect and anxiety anyway.  

What we want to do on vacation (and in life) may change. I’m a planner. I like plans and charts and lists. I even have a meal plan made up for six weeks at a time. Planning makes me feel good, it makes me feel safe. But that isn’t the way life works and I need to learn that change can be a good thing. I had saved for several months for this trip, and I had saved based on a full week of eating out. I cook three meals a day almost every day. It gets old, and part of what I wanted for this vacation was to have someone else cook all of my meals. This wasn’t how vacation turned out. The hubby and I love to go to flea markets and antique stores, both of which are in abundance within a half hour in almost any direction of our resort. We quickly realized that we wanted to spend our vacation shopping, something we rarely get to do without a great deal of thought and planning. In order to do this we had to give up several meals of eating out, and all of the fancy restaurant plans I had. Don’t get me wrong, I wholeheartedly gave up those meals for the items we ended up purchasing (you must see the antique fire extinguisher we turned into a lamp), and we bought sandwich stuff and chips to get us through. We spent the same amount of money I had planned for meals yet the change in plans had me stressed, and the inability to check our account online made things worse. I knew the amount of money we had to spend hadn’t changed but what we were spending the money on hadn’t been in my “plan”. The stress this caused me was unnecessary and made me realize that I have to be okay with change, whether it be in my life or on vacation.

Just sitting is okay. You have no idea how difficult this is for me. I had a great deal of trouble just sitting on the deck of our room and staring out at the lake. A beautiful view and absolutely nothing that needed or had to be done and I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that I needed to be doing something, anything. I made myself sit there until I quit thinking. It didn’t completely stop but there was a wonderful point where I realized that a twist I carry in my stomach had loosened. A twist I hadn’t even realized had been there. I need to learn to just sit. To sit and stare at the world around me, take in its sights, sounds, and smells without worrying about the laundry, the websites, or whether there is dog food in the bowl.

I must take care of myself first. Okay, I’ll admit it, but only if you don’t tell anyone else. I’m fat. I had started to gain a bit as I got older but when I quit smoking three years ago, I gained 30 pounds within a year and a half. This threw me into that awful obese category. For the last several months I have been reducing how much I eat, watching what I actually eat, quit drinking soda, and trying to exercise more. I had lost seven pounds (gained two back over vacation) and they were staying off and had dropped me out of the obese category and into the overweight. Vacation made me realize I need to put even more effort into me. Through high school and early college I did yoga and ran almost every day. I didn’t drink soda and was generally healthy. Obviously this changed but I realize now that I need to go back to that. I have to take time for myself. And it isn’t all about losing weight, it’s also about my clothing and my hair. I’m frugal but I can also have a mean cheap streak. I wear t-shirts until they have holes and have been known to go over a year without even a trim on my hair. I realize that I need to occasionally buy myself something, even if it is just a new t-shirt, I need to wear something besides sweat pants and it helps my self esteem if I get my hair cut a few times a year. And it’s okay to do these things and not feel guilty for them. I will take better care of myself, I will start yoga and running again, I will take time for things I want to do, and I won’t feel guilty about doing them.

Vacations are about having fun, and I had a great deal of fun. I came back with several items that I am in love with and are now found throughout my home and yard but what I came back with that will stick with me more is the realization that parts of my life must change so that I can have a life, so I can relax, and so I can grow as a person.