I’m pleased to say that while I did absolutely bring my laptop home with me from the office yesterday, and while I have glanced at a few e-mails since then — on the iPad, not the laptop — I have yet to do any actual work beyond that. I still might, if only because I have so much of it to do, and because the end of the year is fast approaching. (I also feel like I need to justify bringing the computer home with me in the first place, after Windows Update caused me to miss my earlier train.) But today I largely ignored it. I don’t officially go back to work until a week from Monday, and I am, technically, on vacation.
It’s a vacation more in spirit than in deed. I had paid time off I needed to take before the end of the year. My sister, who’s visiting this weekend, recently went on a cruise to Turkey and Greece, and my parents have taken to travel in recent years as well, now that they’re both retired (or weeks away from it, in my father’s case). It must be nice. Apart from a day trip to Danbury, Connecticut, and a few days on campuses in Maryland, I haven’t been anywhere all year. Even my next work-related trip, if I can set it up, will probably only be somewhere out here on Long Island. The last time I went anywhere, it was to Canada for a week a year ago. And before that, Vegas, which — and I had to double-check this to be sure — was way back in 2009. I’m not looking for any great globe-trekking, but something a little more exciting than a week stuck at home — of which I’ve had, several this year, thanks to sickness, weather, and PTO — would be nice.
This evening, my parents, my sister, and I drove out to Port Jefferson for a birthday dinner for my aunt. The restaurant was okay, but unremarkable — a dessert sorbet was basically a large, unappealing dish of frozen cranberry juice — but it was a nice evening.
The rest of the day I spent doing not much of anything. Though I actually wrote some, working on the start of a short story, which I haven’t been doing in way too long. Maybe it was Heather‘s tales of her recent writing residency, maybe I was just feeling inspired by the prompt I stumbled upon. But it felt good to flex those muscles again, even if I didn’t end up writing very much.
As much work as I have to do — and I do — I think I’d be rather pleased if I actually spent more of the coming week writing something that didn’t involve textbook pedagogy and using my “vacation” that way.