I took a vacation a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t really do anything, so it’s probably more accurate to say I took a few days off work. I refuse to call it a stay-cation or any other cutesy little dipshit name people have come up with. I’d just been working a lot, and I wanted a few days off to relax and get some work around the house done. I relaxed a little, and very little work around the house got done, which was not exactly what I was hoping for and exactly what I was expecting. As it turns out, I happen to be the kind of guy who really needs to go to work in order to get anything done.

I’ve heard people say before that if you want something done, give it to a busy person. I’ve never really spent much time contemplating this statement. The first time I heard it, I thought, yeah, that would be nice, having someone else do something for me. I didn’t much care whether they were busy or not so long as I didn’t have to do something. After that week off, it’s beginning to make far more sense to me. I’m apparently unable to do anything if I don’t do something.

I won’t go down the list of things I planned to get accomplished in my week off, but I will say the list included far more than drinking beer and repeatedly taking naps. Sadly, the naps and the beer drinking were about all that got accomplished. I wish I could name all of the things that popped up and kept me from getting work done, but there really weren’t any, outside of lack of self-motivation.

The thing is, when I go to real work, I get up early and I’m ready to go. When I get home from real work, I’m already sort of in that zone, so I just kind of keep going. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not busting a ton of ass doing work at home, but at least I usually do freaking something each day. On the vacation, I still got up early, but without any sort of deadlines facing me, seconds, minutes, hours and eventually days just sort of slipped by.

Each morning usually began something like this: I would wake up, put on the work clothes, take the dog out and then check the weather on TV to see what sort of day it was going to be. At this juncture, I would then begin to switch channels to see if anything interesting was on. Once my lazy ass sat on the couch, it didn’t really matter if something interesting was on so long as something was on. This resulted in several hours of self-loathing and also several hours of Saved By the Bell, which was not a coincidence. I swear, that freaking show is like crack for me. Afterward, there’s a layer of spittle around my mouth, I’m confused and I don’t really remember anything that just happened. Still, I keep flicking around for another episode.

Eventually this became too much, usually sometime in the late morning, and I would take a quick nap. I thought this would leave me refreshed, but I was usually awakened in some sort of terror, confused as to whether it was day or night and if I should actually be doing something. Feeling I should actually be doing something, I would walk around and look at the things I should have been doing. I think I thought this would lead to some guilt and then to a project completion. In reality, this just led to lunch.

I felt I couldn’t really get started on an empty stomach, so I’d eat something. After this, I apparently confused working with swimming and thus would wait about an hour after eating before getting started. By this time, it was early afternoon and time for a couple of episodes of Law and Order, sometimes also accompanied by a nap.

After this, it was time to walk around and look at the projects again. At this juncture of the day, it was very apparent that paint wasn’t going to scrape itself off the window, and it would usually seem a little late to be getting started, especially if I was going to have a few beers and watch a ball game. I’d done nothing all damned day, and I was exhausted. Five days in a row of this can really make a person miss going to work and accomplishing something. I realized I could stop buying those lottery tickets now because if I didn’t have to work, I would not be able to stand myself.

So that was about it. The time flew by at a snail’s pace, and when the vacation was over, nothing had really changed. I wasn’t rested up or anything. In fact, those frequent naps made virtually every waking moment I had sort of hazy and dreamlike. While attempting to recharge, I somehow converted my body into an instrument that needed more sleep than it ever had. By the time that next Monday morning rolled around, I was practically dancing out to the car so I could go to work. Now, after a few weeks, I’m just getting back to my normal work self. Sometimes a vacation just seems like too much work.