The Unfortunate Side Effect

I’m now one day into my holiday staycation, and mayyyyyybe I hyped myself up on it a little more than I should have.

First of all, I was calling it a vacation, which is totally not accurate.  When you’re on vacation, you’re away from it all.  Ideally, somewhere remote, so you don’t spend hours dorking on social media.  You’re not faced with your house and the crap that’s piled up everywhere after a busy year… with finally enough disposable time to start doing something about it.  Also, you’re there with the stuff you intentionally packed, and guess what?  If you don’t have it, you either don’t really need it, or you go buy a new thing, there’s no hunting around for it.

I got hit by all these yesterday and it made me wonder if I’m cut out for being at home by myself for this long.

First of all, I decided I was going to spend just a few minutes catching up on social media.  An hour later, I realized I was just being ridiculous because I was still on Facebook.  I can’t completely shut it down since that’s how Zliten and I message when he’s at work and I’m not, but I’m trying to limit it.  My fear is looking back at the end of my break and realizing I spent most of it wasting time on the internet, which is neither productive, nor really relaxing.

Then, I decided I wanted some TV for background and went to turn to Universal Sports Network (for some random cycling, swimming, triathlon, etc), and found out they took the channel off the air!  My beloved bike trainer motivation!  The replacement channel is in another package, so I can’t even check it out to see if it’s worth it without calling the cable company.  I was not ready to deal with that yet, so I just put something else on and fumed about it.

The house was a complete and utter disaster, so I spent an hour picking up and cleaning stuff.  Just as I’m trying to do the dishes… the top rack comes off and a part comes flying out.  I’m not sure where it came from or what to do, so I just leave it and decide the dishes can fuck themselves for now.

After most of the house was done, I sat down and decided I was done with being productive, thankyouverymuch, and I was going to spend the rest of the day playing a video game.  The one I wanted to play required a disc… and it was nowhere to be found.  As I looked, I started grabbing junk that wasn’t supposed to be where it was, and after a while, I’d accumulated a nice pile.

I got so frustrated, I was very very close to just starting to grab every piece of JUNK in this house and piling it up in the living room to go through, but my lovely husband talked me down from it.  I said it was that, a drink, or a run, so I opted for the last one and headed out the door for my first run since the 26.2 two and a half weeks ago.

The first mile I sort of grumbled in my head about everything going wrong, but then the run magic kicked in.  I started noticing how pretty the sky was, and getting random songs in my head instead of cranky thoughts.  I even felt like my stride was decent and not super sludgy.

The upshot is the day got better from there.  I found the stupid game in one of the first places I looked but apparently not carefully enough.  Zliten fixed the dishwasher (to the point where we can still do dishes, though it needs a part which is on order).

Later, we went out for another blissful 3 miles and looked at the pretty lights and talked about games and life and just like that I had done 10k on my first day back running and I felt awesome.  There was a little hiccup where Zliten started talking about pace but we came to an understanding when I loudly told him about how many fucks I gave (none, less than none if that’s an option) and he stopped.

So, maybe it’s not as exciting as diving in Bonaire, riding bikes up and down a mountain in Alaska, trekking around Portland breweries, or snorkeling in Cozumel.  Not even close.  But, that’s ok.  That’s not what I need right now.  Just like we always try to balance the adventure with also some lounging on these vacations, I need to balance my productivity with slacking here at home.  If not, I’ll have a very organized house and a very burnt out psyche January 4th, and no one wants that.  Better to pick a few manageable projects that still leave plenty of time for slackitude.

Today, I’ve had a better start.  I slept in.  I’m listening to music and ignoring my TV.  I still spent too much time on social media this morning, but it’s shut down now.  I’m off to finish up the laundry, do one more load of dishes, do some light stretching and strength work (10k back my first day might have been… ambitious), and probably spend the majority of the remainder on my butt playing the Sims.  Because… balance.