Staycation Revelation

 This past weekend was busy. My daughter was home, and we celebrated my husband's birthday on Saturday with a day trip of sorts, attending the National Apple Harvest Festival. It's about an hour away from our house, but was right in my husband's backyard, so to speak, when he was growing up and was similarly close to the apartment I rented when I took on my first adult job 40 years ago. It was the perfect day trip -- a bit nostalgic, close enough to not be exhausting in terms of travel, yet far enough away to be out of the ordinary.  

Yesterday, the first weekday of my fall break, everyone was either off or working from home and ther house was still full. My daughter and I ran errands and, after she left to go home, my husband and I had a relaxing evening in an almost-too-quiet house. 

Today, my second (and final) day of fall break, everyone except me is back to work and I have declared a staycation day. It's just like a regular day off, except that I get to make all the rules about how I spend it. Well, mostly. One commitment did sneak its way onto my calendar (more on that later).

As staycations go, this is a short one. Last summer, frustrated by a summer in which I couldn't seem to settle into a routine that wasn't interrupted by someone else's plans (i.e., amid an ever-shifting calendar, none of my stuff was getting done), I declared a week-long staycation.

I love my family, so I made sure no one was planning on a day off or anything else I needed to pencil into my schedule before I set the dates. Once that was done, I set the guideline.

Singular. One simple rule: unless there was an emergency, no one was to bother me or ask me to do anything or be anywhere between 8am and 5pm on my staycation days, Monday - Friday. My family knows better than to bother me before 8am (at least if they want a coherent response). At 5pm, everything returned to business as usual -- at least until 8am the next morning.

I think my family thought I'd gone a bit 'round the bend (and maybe I had -- I was certainly heading in that direction), but they humored me. And, in doing so, they gifted me with a wonderful week. I read, I wrote, I did whatever I felt like doing. 

On my own terms. 

I expected that it would be relaxing, and hoped it would be therapeutic. Not only was it both of those, it was also revelatory.

With time to think and no pressure to be productive, I came to some overall realizations about how I spend my time and how I allow everyone's choices and expectations (including my own) contribute to that. Even though it was August, I made some resolutions, most of which I've done a decent job of sticking to.

One of those was the "I don't want to wait until I retire to live my life" resolution. That week off was what I imagined my retirement might look like and, with retirement age not too far away, I was inadvertently behaving as though I had to wait until that significant event had taken place in order to do the things I wanted to do. 

I know I'm not alone. Whether it's retirement or something else, I'm sure you know the drill: "When _____, then I'll _____."

Why are we waiting? A lot can happen between the "when" and the "then." Why put additional --  arguably avoidable -- obstacles in the way?

I had some smaller realizations as well but living my life in the now was the big one. And so, on Sunday night, in between my husband's birthday and my day of errands with my daughter, I auditioned for a show. I miss performing, and I can come up with at least a thousand reasons why it's a terrible idea to do a show during the semester, especially when the show adds a half hour commute each way to an already busy schedule.

But schedules were meant to flex and life was meant to be lived. And so, when I got a call that I'd been cast, I accepted the part. That one item that found its way onto my staycation day calendar? A read-through.

I'd love to say I embraced the whole thing with open arms but, the truth is, I was so stressed out about making the commitment that I couldn't fall asleep last night. By this morning, gratitude had elbowed its way into the picture and, as I write this, I'm excited to get started.

I'm sure there will be moments I'll feel spread too thin, annoyed with myself for being impractical, and just flat out exhausted. But, if past experience is any indication, they'll be the exception, and, when I look back at this experience, I'll be glad I set practicality aside and went for fun.

A staycation is a wonderful thing in so many ways. Who knew it would help me re-route my wayward GPS to find a way to work staycation joy into the other days as well?