Pack Your Bags

Vacations are more than adventures. I have gone on some pretty decent vacations in my lifetime, even if I have never left the country. I've spread my travels around from Yellowstone to Miami Beach to the Badlands to the mountains of North Carolina. I've touched both oceans and the gulf. And I'm not complaining. But vacations have morphed since my childhood days.

For my younger days, there was such a mystique about going away. Got all our bags packed the night before - left out the clothes we wanted to wear in the car - woke up well before the sun - slept another 4 hours once we got in the car - and continued the vacation chalk full of time passing car ride games, cheesy tourist detours, and sights that could never be found within Illinois state boundaries.

Vacations meant experiencing something new. Something that my undeveloped mind didn't even know existed.

These days, the idea of a vacation pulls on a much different set of strings. I don't eagerly pack my bags the night before, planning outfit after outfit for each day of a lengthy journey. Now I kinda throw my best pair of jeans in a bag and throw together 3 or 4 shirts I can wear.

To an extent, a vacation is a getaway from my life as opposed to just seeing new scenery. A vacation becomes a chance to reconnect with old friends, bridge previously unreachable gaps, forget about the bowels of your workload, and ultimately do what it takes to stay above water. It gives us something to look forward to when we can't remember what day of the week it is until we hit the weekend. It allows us to find some of that childhood mistique that although forgotten, still seems to seep into our vacation-eve minds and makes us sleep like kids on christmas eve. Forgive me for the bland analogy, but vacations turn adults into kids, even if for different reasons. When we can take over the reigns of our own plans. Vacations allow us to be independent. They keep us alive. And I am excited for my next one.