Vacation Information

[FC]

It Doesn't Sound

Like a Vacation to Me

 

 

By Jared Sandberg

 

From The Wall Street Journal Online

 

In our efforts to unwind from work, one man's healing is another's hell.

 

Some people can't understand Dale Johnson's method of relaxation. The weekend before last, while his wife and kids went camping, Mr. Johnson conducted his quarterly sessions of couch-bound activities, which involve lots of beer and delivery menus. The technology consultant wakes up on Saturday and plays videogames, then sits in front of the TV for auto racing, "watching lots of cars going round and round and round all day," he says. When that's over, he says, "You just sort of sit there and watch television." Then on Sunday, he'll wake up and do much the same thing all over again.

 

"It's the only way to live," he says. "You've got to turn off. I'd be dead by now if I didn't."

 

That kind of thing is "not at all" appealing to Mary Harada. The retired history professor has always used running as a release from work's grip. "It's kind of weird in a way: What you do for recreation you work as hard at as you do for work," she says.

 

It paid off. Earlier this year, at the age of 70, she broke a world record for the mile among women in her age category, running it in a little over seven minutes. Without running as an outlet, she says, "I would have been an ax murderer."

 

Says Mr. Johnson: "I hope I never run that much, even if my body lets me."

 

As the demands on our time grow, the question isn't how one chooses to put work troubles behind, but whether one has succeeded in finding work's antivenom. Some of us return from vacation at this time of year feeling thoroughly unrelaxed. That may be because what seems like an ideal vacation -- sunshine, drinks with little umbrellas and extended tours of slumberland -- aren't the kind of relaxation that some say we need most.

 

"Lying around a pool is death for a little while for most people with half a brain," says Geoff Godbey, a professor of leisure studies at Pennsylvania State University.

 

But some of us pillow-seeking half-brains would ask why.

 

To be most satisfying, Prof. Godbey explains, leisure should resemble the best aspects of work: challenges, skills and important relationships. Leisure has its hierarchy. At the lowest level, it's a search for diversion, higher up it's a search for pleasure and, at the top, it's a search for meaning. "It's not that diversion is bad," says the professor, "but in terms of human growth, it's inferior to activities that are more pleasurable -- and they're inferior to activities that are more meaningful."

 

Scientific evidence, he notes, shows that people who engage in skill-oriented leisure -- crossword puzzles, bridge, chess, woodworking -- score higher on practical intelligence tests. "Leisure is a very important medium for making us stupider or more intelligent," he says. "At the end of your life what you've done with your leisure may be more important than what you've done at work."

 

Who knew that all that sleep was bad? The whole idea can have you rethinking a lot about yourself, not least of which is that you haven't lived up to your potential at play, either.

 

Thankfully, not all sociologists see eye to eye on the subject of what goals, if any, we should have for relaxation. Arlie Hochschild, a sociologist and author of "The Time Bind," says play has become increasingly like work. As recently as the 19th century, leisure involved more loafing and unexpected events, she says. These days, "it's more project oriented," she adds. "You kind of work at play." It's a paradox, she says, that haunts her, too.

 

But not Warren Bainter, an accountant in Oberlin, Kan., whose vacations sound as busy and tiring as work. For years he'd go on 500-mile bike trips across Kansas or Nebraska. And during the summers for 15 years, he'd help a client harvest his wheat by sitting atop a 30-foot wide John Deere combine, thrashing 500 bushels per hour. "You feel huge," he says. "It's different than running a pencil or calculator... . You let your mind slide into neutral."

 

Similarly, Malcolm Reding's vacations tend to be productive. The former headhunter once took nearly a month off to design and plant five raised flowerbeds totaling 1,600 square feet. "I planted about 400 shrubs and seedlings and 600 bulbs," he says. "It was very satisfying."

 

More recently, he has taken up wood turning. Says Mr. Reding: "All my friends are getting wooden wine-bottle stoppers, and/or pepper mills for Christmas for some years to come."

 

For others, work is bearable only if they administer some release each day. That can be something as simple as kvetching in a coffee klatch or booking the next vacation. The fantasy of travel is often just as good as the travel itself, sometimes better. It isn't so much whether the antidote is relaxing or not, just that it's theirs and no one else's.

 

"At work, the agenda is set by someone else or the market and I'm not necessarily in control," says market analyst Eugene Apicella, whose primary workplace antidote is going home each day to household chores, including changing dirty furnace filters. "I cleaned it. I fixed it and I don't owe it to anybody else but me."

 

 

[fritz]

Kinda reminds me of the old radio dj we had on a nearby station for what seemed like a century. His name was Charles Raymond Lewis, Charlie Lewis for short (but he always said he was Charles Raymond Lewis from Pellham, GA.)

 

His motto (always mentioned everyday on the air) was "Work hard when you work. Play hard when you play".

 

When asked where Pellham was, he said "About three miles from Ty-ty" His idea of a vacation was the daily rounds of all his old friends he met everyday at a local coffee shop.

 

When he died, it was in a way like the day the music stopped (Buddy Holley tradgedy).

 

We all have our own way of enjoying ourselves.

 

fritz