Vacating

I'm on vacation. It's so nice. It's the first true vacation I think I've taken in almost four years. Yeah, I've taken breaks, I've gone places, I've visited people, but I've never thought of those excursions as vacations. I am currently in Florida, and I've literally vacated my routine life and self. I write today about why true vacation is so critical.

Vacation literally means "emptying." I came here without anything I normally keep with me at this time of year (notebooks, grading, winter clothes) and brought stuff I would never dream of using back at home (books, suntan lotion, my iPod, gym clothes). I am allowing myself to leave normalcy behind for a while and truly bask in the glory of things unplanned. I have no idea what I'm going to do tomorrow. I have no to-do list. I also have no friends here except for the people with whom I'm staying, and they have their own agenda. I'm just along for the ride.

So I've been going through old e-mails, writing to and reconnecting with old friends, watching forwarded movies from TED (or Youtube) that I haven't had occasion to watch, reading books that have been sitting on my bedside table for years, reading articles that have been open in tabs in my browser for God knows how long, flossing before bed(!), seeing theatre, taking walks on the beach, just conversing without a care for what's next or worrying where I have to be in an hour. I feel free.

Vacation seems to give us the permission to do things in a different way, to shake things up a bit... Or it allows us - somehow - to give ourselves that permission. It's a special time.

I've been on a quest recently to rediscover what makes me passionate, and taking a real vacation is a perfect way to do so because it puts perspective on the life in which I am marred. If we take time to extricate ourselves from what we always do, we "remember" that things don't necessarily have to be that way. Then, thoughts turn naturally to figuring out how we can replicate this feeling back in "real life." I think the answer is simpler than it seems: just do it! Give yourself permission, occasionally, to take a real break.

I realized that I do actually give myself mini-vacations sometimes. For example, two weekends ago, between performances of a show, I had mistakenly left myself two hours of unstructured time. I had nothing with me -- no books, no papers, nothing -- and I didn't have time to go home and come back without spending all of it in transit. I was at a loss, so I went to a nearby pub, sat at the bar alone, and thought. Believe it or not, I hadn't thought much since college, at least not in the "deep" sense. Back then, all I did was think all day,  seeing as I was a philosophy major. I took some napkins and began to write what came to my head.

Life is...

what you make of it
short
unique
special
one-time(?)
worth it
hard
important(?)
interesting
people & things
money
sad
everything
yours. mine.
long
paradoxical
meaningful & meaningless
what you make of it -- what you think
what others make of it for you
inspiring
fun
beautiful
to be shared
cyclical
simple & complex

I want...

to be myself -- and different
happiness
love
pleasure
to help people
to inspire people; to be inspired
to be known
to give back to my family
to feel loved and appreciated
to have a family of my own
to make beauty
to be proud of myself and what I do -- to feel satisfied
to do something important

I love...

music
languages
my family
thinking, analyzing
writing
beauty
crying -- emotion, FEELING
honesty
goodness
good food & drink
laughing
working hard
compliments
sleeping
making lists
being thought highly of
discussion
planning and seeing plans come through

I need...

to have self-confidence
food, water, and shelter
to be satisfied with myself
to have both a serious (responsible) and lighthearted (irresponsible) side
friends & family
money 
inspiration, stimulation, motivation -- meaning
to be independent -- happy with my own decisions and for my own reasons
to be responsible -- to myself  & to others

I had forgotten how much I enjoy just pondering things. In my life now, I don't really have time to ponder because I'm (necessarily) so practical. Get up, eat, go to work, grade, go to rehearsal, go to bed. Do it again. But if you stop thinking -- deeply -- then you quickly lose sight of your priorities, and you risk becoming complacent and forgetting about what you really want out of life. It's dangerous, and it's unfortunately condoned by our society. Security is paramount. Risk taking and forward thinking, while nice in theory, always fail in practice.

But to me, there's no other way to live than to follow your heart. Even when it's hard to hear what it's saying. And you won't ever hear unless you stop to listen.