End of Vacation Blues

July is nearly ending, and it suddenly hit me that my three-month-long summer vacation is way more than half-over. So, I have begun to panic at the thought that my happy days are nearly over. This shows you that my perspective in life is more of the "glass is half-empty" variety. After all, I have three weeks or so left, and for other people three weeks is more vacation time than they can hope to have in a year. Nonetheless, I began to dread the end of my days of bumming around and being totally unproductive.

At the start of my California vacation in May, I had to adjust to doing ABSOLUTELY nothing. This, of course, didn't take very long (as they say... like a fish to water). At first, I felt a measure of guilt at this unproductivity. It was the first time in years (decades?) that nothing was expected of me by anyone. Not my bosses at work, not my professors in school. I didn't even have to run errands, as I had to do when I had long vacations as a student living with my parents. I was accountable to no one. It was a very strange feeling, and again, one I quickly got used to.

So, I spent my lazy days in Cali getting in touch with my inner slacker. During the day, I'm left all alone in the house until Kuya, Liz, and Aidan come home from work/pre-school. So I whiled away my time reading, watching videos, surfing the Internet, chatting with friends online, catching up on Hollywood gossip in Star magazine, or just staring at nothing and daydreaming. What surprised me about all this me-time that I was having is that I was NEVER bored, and time just flew by. I know that a lot of people would probably be itching to do something, or go somewhere, if faced with all that time on their hands. Not me, though. I discovered that I'm perfectly comfortable doing nothing and having nothing to show for my day.

I easily rationalized this sloth-like behavior by thinking that I'm not going to have another three-month long break in the foreseeable future (unless I win the lottery), so I might as well enjoy it. So, enjoy it I did. The problem now is that I'm so used to my lazy lifestyle, that I know I will find it difficult to get back into the rhythm of school (and eventually, the demands of work). Well, I do have a few weeks more to prepare for it, though I doubt that I'll do something as useful as thinking about my Master's project or anything of the sort. I'll probably just end up watching more Comedy Central and reading about why Tom Cruise is determinedly keeping baby Suri from the public. (Is she really disfigured as some have claimed? Stay tuned.)