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Posted: 7/26/2024

The Mundane Should Be Celebrated

Whenever there is a special occasion of some kind (traveling, vacation, whatever), I always get this sense of dread that I'm not getting the most out of it.

Someone visiting for a little while: you must spend as much time with them to make the most of their stay.

Visiting a new place: you must constantly be out and seeing as much as you can before you go home.

Summer break: this is the time to do so much stuff that you won't be able to do as easily in the future.

It's an acidic feeling that I get as I lie in the bed of a hotel room or idly sitting at a theme park: the feeling that there is so much potential for positive experiences that I Do Not Want To Waste.

This probably stems from a drive to “”””be productive””””. After all, if I efficiently vacation, then I can enjoy it as much as I can.

I think it’s a largely misguided feeling. When I think of other people vacationing, I get the impression that they are always doing Unique Experiences that cannot be done elsewhere. There’s not much room for the smaller, more mundane things. Things like idly walking down a random street, sitting on a bench and watching people go about their lives, slowly learning the local area, doing the laundry in a new place, lying in bed, or simply listening to the sounds around you.

In general, I feel that I’m not really that big a fan of experiencing specific spectacles; I don’t feel the need to go to a place specifically to see this thing.

Maybe I don’t really know what I want out of a vacation. I’m pretty content with the novelty of having my daily routine radically changed. I’m still going to have a place to sleep, but the hotel room is different from my normal bedroom. I can look outside my window or step outside my door and see things that I haven’t seen a million times over in my home. I can engage with the physical space around me instead of navigating purely from memory.

I can see the walls around me once again.

That doesn’t stop me from having the feeling that I’m wasting the vacation, though.