STAYCATION

They say on the stress scale of life, vacations are up there.  How foolish is that for those of us who work 40 to 60 hours a week or more?  We Americans who work harder than many other of our compatriots in European countries or Australia.  Those of us lucky enough to have jobs.

We long to get away from our everyday lives to a fantasy island or exotic country or lovely beachfront or we want to reinvigorate our marriages—like in the early days when we couldn’t keep our hands off each other.  We want to be completely stress free and happy.  We want to be younger and better versions of ourselves.  We want to do everything we never get a chance to do during our busy work weeks.  Is this asking too much? 

When I told my friends and colleagues that I was taking two weeks off (even though I have many more banked days) they got so excited.  “Where are you going, where are you going?” 

“I’m going home,” I said. 

“Oh, to Australia!!!  Fabulous.” 

“No, actually.  It’s a Staycation.” Sorry it couldn’t be Sydney or Barcelona or Cardiff by the Sea.  Glassell Park in LA.  Big yawn.  My home, right or wrong. 

“It’s a working woman’s dream,” I assured my critics with more surety than I felt.  A working woman without kids, of course.  Dealing with kids and vacations:  well, that’s another whole essay I shall leave to others. 

Not only was my husband, who has his own company and works from home, not really on vacation, but it also didn’t seem like much of a rest after a hectic year at work to organize it, pack, fly somewhere and then come back to work exhausted.  An LA vacation would be great for me. 

People come from all over the world to visit LA.  I could have 17 glorious days here, counting weekends and Fridays (when the college was closed), to explore or not, as the spirit moved me.  I told all who inquired that I would take little day trips and do all the things I never had time for.  A colleague of mine sent me an actual itinerary they had created for their Staycation that included two packed weeks of Hollywood tours, art galleries, shows, beaches, parks, fine dining, concerts etc. etc.  I deleted it from my e-mail.  After all, organizing and making plans was what I had to do EVERY day in my job.  I would be free floating, Zen, relaxed, take it as it comes, open, expansive, fearless, a vegetable or not, as the mood dictated.

Still, I couldn’t help organizing it in my mind.   Go to Huntington Gardens, go to the beach, go to very important museums, read books, see movies, see dear friends, go see Dudamel conduct at Disney Concert Hall, organize: (yes, there’s that terrible word) my shoes that were heaped in an indistinguishable mass at the bottom of my closet, clothes that crowded my closets, handbags crushed together in a heap.  Exercise, relax, relax, relax.  Figure out how to post to my blog, buy and learn how to use a tablet, clean out my bathroom drawers. Relax.  Relax.  Relax.

The two weeks have come and gone.  Now, I can share the unvarnished truth.  I spent a week before my vacation anxious and upset.  There was so much I wanted to do and so much I didn’t want to do—for which the time off seemed puny.  Was I setting myself up for failure before I even began?  My last day of work, however, gave me hope.  

I was joyous, at 5:30 PM, after everyone had left, taking care of each piece of paper on my desk.  By 6:30 my desk was clean and my voice and e-mail message explained to everyone that I was on vacation.  I left the office, excited.

Worry not.  This will not be a blow by blow account of the Staycation.  Rather, it is a sociological overview of how it worked, how it felt, and what it added to the general economy: smoothly, wonderful, nothing.  By the time I returned to work, I was prepared and relaxed.  So take notes, all you high achievers out there.

True, I checked work e-mail, and six days before the end of my vacation, prepared a to-do list for my first day back.  But, then again, I didn’t wake up worrying at two or three A.M.  And my first day back was pretty good.  You might say, I hit the ground running.  Not being dragged behind the car on a bumpy, perilous road, the way one feels after three weeks on some exotic island.

I did some swell things during those two weeks.  At the top of my list was a breakfast in Marina del Rey with my dear friend—great coffee, great eggs, great conversation.  A three and a half hour lunch with another friend in the Mid-Wilshire district—including a walking tour of a Jewish Temple and lunch to catch up.  An amazing telephone conversation with my brother in Melbourne.  Sitting on Santa Monica Beach watching the waves, lunch at the Omelet Parlor on Main Street reading Meg Wolitzer’s “The Interestings” on my Kindle.  That book was another high point of my Staycation.  If you haven’t read it, you are in for a treat.  As soon as I finished it, I wanted to start reading it again.  And I will.  After I’ve read everything else this brilliant broad has written. 

I discoverd another tremendous writer during my vacation, James Salter, whose un-literary name used to be “Horowitz!”  This prolific man is now 85 and has won all sorts of awards.  I am working my way through his books, too.  How did I not know about him?  I told my dear Marina del Rey friend that I was in love with James and she reminded me that I was married and that he was married.  “I am theoretically in love with him,” I earnestly explained.  Read his books and you’ll understand.   

I spent a day at Huntington Gardens, and even though they were doing major construction, managed to find many comfortable benches in the Japanese, Australian, and Chinese gardens to listen to my IPOD with the many thousands of songs my wonderful brother has given to me. (Best present I ever got!)  I even wandered through a garden I’d never been in before and attempted to take photos on my phone.  The glare was so great, I couldn’t see a thing.  And when I got back home, I discovered I had taken upside-down, shaky videos instead of photos.  (Next vacation:  learn how to use the camera feature.)

I never made it to the Important and Interesting Museums, which, honestly, I find less and less compelling.  The best gallery I ever experienced was outdoors—the artwork of Australian sculptor and painter Bruno Torfs.  

 

“Nestled amongst the luscious rainforest setting lives a collection of unforgettable characters lovingly hand crafted by Bruno from clay and fired onsite in his kiln. Bruno has created a world rich with fantasy and insightful beauty derived from his imagination and inspired by his intrepid journeys to some the world most intriguing and remote regions.”

 

My husband and I went with there my baby sister and her family.  It was the highpoint of our visit to Australia three years ago.  You could wander around Bruno’s garden and actually touch things.  I know, I know.  You can’t do that with everything.  But, museums are numbing experiences to me these days.  I don’t like armed guards standing in every corridor, around every bend.  I don’t like viewing art behind barriers.

I spent several cool evenings outside on our front patio with my husband, sipping lovely white wine, watching the sunsets and chatting.  This works only if you have an interesting Zen husband/partner who still thinks it’s worth sitting outside with you.  And vice versa.

I ordered on-line two 3-tiered shoe racks for our closets to organize our mayhem of shoes.  I am in heaven because my shoes no longer fall into an indistinguishable heap. I even discovered very serviceable shoes that I had forgotten all about.   I also located at Target some plastic stackable drawers to keep my handbags from tumbling into one another.  I gave three large garbage bags of stuff from my closets to a nonprofit.  I wish my creative baby sister lived here so she could have helped me reorganize all my clothes but I had to make do.

I bought an Android Galaxy Tablet and started to learn how to use it.  People at work no longer use pen and paper, and I need to go with the flow.  Although I still love pen and paper and, at the moment, I hate my tablet.    

There was more.  Waking up in the morning and remembering that there was nothing I had to do.  Sleeping a bit late.  It’s pathetic.  But when you get OLD you can’t sleep late any more.  Seven a.m. is very late for me and my husband.  Still, seven felt great.  Once, it was even seven-thirty. 

One more thing—we bought tickets for a concert at Disney Hall with Gustavo Dudamel, Yo Yo Ma and the Los Angeles Philharmonic on September 30th.  It’s something I’ve wanted to do ever since Dudamel started as conductor there several years ago.  Very expensive tickets, but it’s going to be worth every penny.  Besides, we saved so much not flying anywhere or paying for hotels.

And now, I’m back at work.  But I went back with a fully fleshed out game plan.  My first week was productive and relatively stress-free, although you might have to check with my husband about that.  I know that half the world is falling apart.  And there are so many injustices that exist.  In Africa.  In Syria.  In Eygpt.  In Israel.  In Florida.  In Texas.  And right here in LA.  And so many of those problems seem intractable.  But still, we need to survive this world.  We need to find our own balance, which may, at times, include, not watching the news, not trying to solve all of the world’s problems, not taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong.

Taking a vacation gave me the illusion of control: organizing my shoes and handbags and to-do lists.  And it gave me the illusion that I’d given up control:  not knowing what I would do each day.  Playing it by ear.  Even though my vacation is over now, I still have a job that engages me and in which I feel like I am doing good things for young people.  Because of this vacation, I feel kinder and gentler towards every living, breathing thing.  And grateful for living in in this crazy, strange city.