I’ve recently decided that I could benefit from seeing each day as a vacation day. I’ve tried to bring some element of mini-vacation into each day for a few decades to deflate each day a little and bring some sparkle with a little 5-15 minute vacation. This new concept is more about changing our frame of mind about our regular days, our regular surroundings and lifestyle, and see our “regular” life as vacation.
Many of the things we see, eat and do might be considered as a vacation to someone else. For instance, the metro (subway) I take regularly, was once a tourist attraction to me. I was so impressed with taking an underground train. My favorite thing was sitting in the train and watching the way the it turns, goes up and down. It’s been over 20 years and I still love watching it like I did as a tourist.
Do we take our day-to-day for granted?
Could parts (or all) of our lives be something that others would find interesting to live and would even consider it a vacation?
Can we live each day as a vacation?
Today, I’d like to read a book about how to live in this vacation mind-set all the time. Why? Why not! I think we could all use more vacation time! But more specifically, it’s because I see so many people living for their vacation and dreading their day-to-day. We deserve more than that. We deserve a life of vacation!
LET’S DO THIS!
Aaahhh, vacations! How great is it to just put our feet up, dig our toes in sand or hike up a scenic path and watch the sun set?
We squirrel our vacation days, plan our vacation and jealously guard every moment of our vacation time. Each of our ideas about what constitutes a perfect vacation might differ, but something remains: We FEEL like we are on vacation.
Karine’s definition of Vacation: A period of time when one is away from their regular duties and has the opportunity to explore places, activities, foods and leisure beyond the usual. A vacation requires 3 things: 1) Relaxation, 2) Enjoyment and 3) Appreciation. Though individual concepts of vacation time may vary dramatically and require different aspects, the creation of memories while appreciating the moment are key to all. Vacation may be in one’s home if that is what they enjoy, just as it might be in an exotic local if that is what one loves.
Different people like different styles of vacation. Some people need a good couch and a fully-charged remote control, others need a beach and a fully stocked bar. I enjoy a delightful balance of learning, solving issues and cheerful outings.
We all want more vacation, right?!? Who doesn’t!!
Sidenote: I know someone who’s squirreling their vacation to be able to get 6 months off!
Overshare: I’ve always been confused about vacation. As a child and teen, I would have preferred to have my 180 days of school spread out throughout the year instead of leaving us with a winter vacation and a summer vacation. I would have LOVED 4-day school weeks! As a young adult, I loved working! LOVED IT! And I took vacation to escape from the bad parts of my job, but missed the good parts of my work. I took vacation to heal mostly. I also took vacation to discover new places and spend more time with my loved ones.
Let’s look at WHY?
To address vacation, I feel we need to address WHY we NEED to vacation?
- Relax
- Enjoy
- Breathe
- Heal
- Discover
- Escape
- and deal with things in life we don’t have time to deal with on a daily basis that might pile-up and pile-up and we have no choice but to take care of them during our precious vacation days that we carefully plan and save for throughout the year because we have no choice and we really need to deal with things because our lives are incredibly full.
But how to we add more vacation to our lives?
Activity: Your Perfect Vacation
Before packing our bags, let’s think about what has made your vacations good?
What are the memories you hold onto?
Listing the items that make your vacation elements perfect for you allows us to see which time of vacationer we are. As you list, consider the little things, not just the big-ticket aspects. For instance, consider the smells, the time of the day you enjoy and ____________.
I’ve found 2 ways: Daily Mini-Vacation & Looking at our lives as vacations 🙂
The Daily Mini-Vacation
The application is simple:
1) Imagine that your home is a AirBnb or something of the sort and that it:
The Vacation Day
The Vacation Day differs from the Mini-Vacation in that it is looking at our entire life, aspect by aspect, as something someone else would want to live for a day.
Example: Just as my home could be an AirBnb, so could my life. Let’s call that AirLife. What if someone would absolutely adore to spend the day as a caregiver and won an opportunity to do so!? What if I could AirLife working on a dairy farm, like my friend does every day since she was born?
Think of making your space as much of a space that you would AirBnb for yourself and making your life as AirLife for yourself. I know this sounds ridiculously cheesy, but making aspects of our life ready for us to appreciate them as if we were renting them might just make them more special.
Even aspects we’re not fond of.
And I love the idea of making all the aspects of our own life special.
Simple dinner: let’s make that special.
Simple walk in the neighborhood: let’s make that special.
Reading a book: let’s make that special.
Every day that we live if special. It cannot be replaced. So, wouldn’t you agree with me that every day deserves to be appreciated as such? That we deserve that?
Take a picture, it’ll last longer
During a vacation, we generally have our camera at the ready to snap a moment we want to keep forever. We want to bottle it and come back to it.
What about doing this on our daily life?
We spend more time in our daily life than we do in vacation, which possibly means that have more opportunities for magic in our daily life than we do during vacation! If we let it!
I propose this: Take pictures of the lovely things we like in our daily life.
For a while, we can observe what we “should” have taken a picture of and then, have our camera at the ready and try to take a few pictures a week.
Consider a coffee or dinner with friends and family as vacation time. Consider a walk through the park at lunch as if you were touring a new city. Consider sitting on your porch as though you were sitting on the porch of a delightful AirBnb 🙂
Sidenote: I’m a fan of social media, and you can post your photos if you want. However, the goal of what I’m suggesting is something for yourself, sharing in memories with loved ones and learning to love our daily mini-vacations.
Happy vacation everyone!
Enjoy each day,
Karine