What I Did On My Summer Vacation

I’m not the kind of person who plans vacations. When it comes to taking time off from work, the only rule I like to follow is: whatever it is I’m doing, I want to do less of it.

My ideal vacation is to sit on the back porch and read a book, or just watch the clouds go by.

To vacate means to leave unoccupied, but too many people get hung up on the leaving part, leading to lots of unnecessary movement and the planning that goes with it. As soon as there’s a schedule involved, it feels like work.

I’m not against travel. I’ll visit new places, as long as someone else makes the reservations.

Once upon a time there was a golden age when the kind of vacation I dream of today was not only possible, it really happened. When I was a young boy my summers were filled with glorious stretches of nothing.

Of course I didn’t just sit on the back porch and read, or lie in the grass and watch the clouds all summer long.

But I could have done those things if I wanted to, all summer long.

Or I could head out the front door and walk a few blocks to the playground, or ride my bike somewhere.

We played stickball in the street, and football, and most nights we played hours of hide and seek with all the kids in the neighborhood sneaking through yards and hiding in bushes, under decks, behind sheds and air conditioners.

We would go on hikes and build skateboard ramps, play running bases or Frisbee or make up new games with whatever we had handy.

Sometimes we went to the carnival or an amusement park or a movie.

But the best part of it all was that we didn’t have to plan any of it. It all just happened. There was no schedule.

Thirty years later I find myself planning summer vacations, starting with whether I can take time off from work.

There’s always a project that’s just about to start, or something else that is almost ready to roll out.

It’s also a lot harder to relax when instead of two months all you’ve got is two weeks away from work.

And there is no real “away” from work anymore, not with cell phones and email.

This summer I drove to Florida and back. That wasn’t so bad. I wasn’t the one making the reservations. All I had to do was the driving.

We stopped in South Carolina on the way down. As we were getting on the elevator in the hotel, a teenage boy talking into a cell phone joined us.

I don’t know about you, but when I see someone taking a call on an elevator, I think it must be something important.

It looks like there are a lot of very important people taking these emergency phone calls all over the place these days.

The hotel had a free continental breakfast buffet. There was a flat-screen television on the wall that was tuned to CNBC. I took a look around the dining room, not wanting to ruin my vacation with news of any kind.

Most of the people that morning were looking at the TV. Some of them were reading email or texting on their cell phones. None of them looked like they were on a business trip. It was Saturday.

There is a lot of information out there, and if we’re not careful, it’s going to overwhelm us.

Without consciously planning it I had spent most of July avoiding news, any news: economics, politics, sports. I also stayed away from my Facebook page.

It started because I wanted to spend more time with my kids. My idea of having a good time means that I don’t stop in the middle of it, log into Facebook, and write “having a good time!” That seems like a sure-fire way to stop the fun. And yet that’s just what some people are doing.

Yes, I know I sound like an old timer, telling stories about my technology-free youth and not being comfortable with your newfangled social networking software and ubiquitous connectivity.

It’s not that I don’t “get” Facebook, or that I don’t see the value in how easy it’s getting to share information. It’s that I don’t want to get it.

I want my time to be my own again.

Also, computers are how I make my living. They are what I work on. As I get older, I’m starting to look forward to a time when I do not have to work. Meanwhile, the rest of the world keeps finding more ways to use these things in everyday life.

And when they have trouble with their computers, they call me. Because they know I work with computers.

“Are you busy?” That’s how I know my brother has just called me for tech support.

Last time, he wanted me to tell him how to connect his computer to a wireless printer he had bought.

I don’t have a wireless printer myself and he had the manual but he expected me to be able to figure out how to do this over the phone, since I work with computers and was not doing anything else.

I never liked homework. I didn’t like it in school. I don’t like it now.

Not only have I been spending this summer less plugged in than I normally was, but—keep this quiet—I have also stopped checking my email on weekends or after hours.

And I don’t answer my cell phone every time it rings, either.

This sort of behavior could get you fired these days.

As for the news, I’ll take that when I’m ready for it, on my own time. I don’t need a constant 24-hour drip of news. Whatever it is, it can wait.

Just doing this for a month has left me feeling a lot more relaxed. I’ve had more time for reading and watching the clouds roll by. And I’ve been able to enjoy doing nothing again.

There’s only one problem.

When I was younger, when I went back to school and was asked to write about what I did on my summer vacation I’d always get stuck.

How could you write about nothing?