I recently enjoyed some time off. After my deliberations a few months ago, followed by an exhausting road trip, I decided this time to stay home for a week. Nine days at home without having to go to work represented an experience I haven’t had for years. I found it educational.
Staycation as vacation
A vacation away is stimulating. As part of my staycation, I wanted to plan some new activities, preferably in a part of town (or nearby regions) I hardly ever get to. I had thought that one activity per day would be ideal. It probably would be, if I hadn’t been so worn out before the vacation started. I really only scheduled 3 fun activities for the week (2 museum visits and 1 sports event); my husband and I enjoyed all of them.
Sleeping in doesn’t sound like much of a vacation, but I really needed it. Also, apparently, my natural waking hour isn’t 7:30, as I had thought, but 8 or 8:30 AM. This cut into my time for other things, but was probably the most beneficial thing I did the whole week.
A staycation can be quite inexpensive, especially if sleeping in is one of your top activities. Our extra activities (we didn’t schedule as many as we should have) cost, at the most, $207. Had we scheduled one a day, I would estimate we would spend $450 for the week. I haven’t gone anywhere recently where a week away cost so little.
Clearing the to-do list
With all the time off, I wanted to clear out my to-do list: tidying the house, sorting papers, shredding sensitive stuff, running errands. I’m the sort of person who can never clear her list (I suspect my current list would take 2- 3 weeks to complete), but I certainly made progress.
Part of my list was to take care of shopping and business obligations, things I can seldom do while working. I used to love tootling around in my car to go shopping, but this week I found it wasn’t as much fun as it used to be. Maybe I was just too tired, maybe I was torn between doing things in the house and going out. I think a lot has to do with my efforts to clear out clutter in the past few years. Suddenly a cute item (clothing, decorations, paper) is less appealing when I think I’ll have to give it away in a few years.
Some of my list was made up of chores that seemed so hard when I was running back and forth to work all the time. They seemed too complicated to figure out; it turns out when you have a few minutes to breathe (and use the internet), some of these chores are actually easy. It turns out that Staples will recycle small electronics. Plus all those cords to old devices that I never know what to do with. Win!
I also found out that Coinstar will give you an electronic gift card for your coins without charging any fees. The last I had checked, you had to pay a percentage of your money to turn your coins into money. No more! Our big jars of metal can be turned into money to use at Lowe’s, Amazon, Starbucks, or Hotels.com; and I don’t even have to spend time rolling them. I didn’t take care of it yet, but I think clearing out a big jar of coins will be on the list for the coming weeks.
Staycation as a practice run for retirement
Fritz over at The Retirement Manifesto wrote a few years ago about using vacation time to practice what life might be like in retirement. I tried to keep that mindset during my week off, but I think I had too many other things to do in that week: rest, see fun things, clean up after an extremely busy 4 months.
For the most part, I don’t want to spend my time in retirement doing what I did this past week (catch up on sleep and shred papers).
However, I did use some of my time to explore some of the activities I hope to do (or try) in retirement. It turns out that some of the items are on my to-do list, rather than my already-doing list, not because I don’t have time, but because I probably really don’t want to do them. I’ll keep trucking though, in case I have more energy for them later.
One of the most important things I learned was that I need some social stimulation in my life. Every day that I go to work, I see my fellow doctors, the nurses, the assistants, the administrative staff. That’s not counting all the patients I meet for the first time, or catch up with on their return visits. Staying home from work, I really noticed the lack of social activity in my calendar.
Two of my staycation highlights were meeting an old co-worker for coffee and visiting a long-time friend on the weekend. Before I will be ready for retirement, I will need to build up my social schedule. My Dad retired to a busy schedule of sports (golf), social gatherings (book club, bridge, dinners) and volunteering (Meals on Wheels). As far as I can tell he had a great time for many years. I’ll need to work on this for myself.
Half-way through my vacation, I started searching Google flights and vacation sites. Though I was too tired to go this time, I think future vacations will incorporate travel and tourism again. That will, I think, be also an important aspect of vacation and retirement, while we are capable of it.
What do you prefer, travel or staycation? Is either good, as long as you aren’t working? Or are you the person who hates to take time off?