Earlier this week, Ms. Our Next Life published an article, What We’ve Learned From Living Where Everyone Else Is On Vacation. It resonated with me because we live in a vacation destination.
What I found interesting is that she wrote it from a mountain vacation perspective. I had a conversation with my 4-year old that he isn’t seeing snowy mountains. They simply aren’t on our island in Rhode Island. Our vacation area might be islands instead mountains, but as my 3-year old says, “In some ways we are different… But in so many ways, we are the same.”
I’d like to think that I inspired the article with my article about who buys airplane nips last week. (And if you are reading this, Ms. ONL, and it wasn’t the inspiration, tell me sweet little lies.)
Slow Down
I think the main theme of the article is to slow down (or “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”).
That reminds me of an old commercial:
(It was years before I’d step inside a Roy Rogers and I don’t think I’ve ever bought food there. Never underestimate the power of jingles… my 4 year old is marketing OxiClean and Clorox to me.)
And because I often think in threes, I can’t leave out Jack Johnson. (As you are reading this article, I’m listening to Jack Johnson.) I wrote about Jack Johnson for a week for a reason. More than a few of his songs are about getting off the treadmill of life and enjoying nature. (Off the top of my head, there’s “Breakdown” and “Inaudible Melodies.”)
“I got it, already. I’m going slow… so what else?”
Ms. ONL makes a couple of other great points, such as put down the cell phone and talk to people.
But, I’m going to take this back to going slow again.
I used to be one of those grumpy people on vacation trying to schedule everything. I think it was a decade ago, but I chewing out a waiter for the long wait for food. (I’m not proud of it, but we’ve all been there right?) He said words that I won’t forget, “Relax, we’re on island time.”
The concept of “island time” changed my whole perspective. I think that’s why Ms. ONL’s article resonated so much with me. Any time I start to get anxious, I just think, “island time” and it melts away.
Maybe I’ll be one of those rush, rush people again. I can definitely see it happening if a great museum in Europe is closing. I think it depends on the type of vacation. If I’m focusing on seeing all the sights, I can see moving quickly. However, most of my vacations are about island time. On my last vacation to a tiny island my wife and I did talk to locals to find the hidden gems.
After 11 years of writing about personal finance, it seems that much of it leads to rushing to save a pile of money and investing it. I firmly believe that is the best plan if you want to retire early. However, as I get older, I find that the moments I treasure most are the ones when I’m walking a sacred labyrinth with my family.
I’d love for you to explore this topic more. My wife and I joke about cashing out on the local real estate boom and moving to our favorite place, Destin, FL. But would it be our favorite place if we didn’t get the full vacation treatment: stay right at the beach, sleep late, eat out daily, etc. And what about winter(though it would be much milder than what you deal with).
Of course, Wesley. I wasn’t particularly happy with how this article turned out, so maybe I can make amends in the comments.
I actually meant to cover the topic you mentioned in the article, but I forgot. It’s very weird to live in a place where you want to vacation. There are huge positives like being able to go out and having mini-vacations for a few hours a few times a week.
The downside is that there’s always “work” here. By that I mean, there’s always chores, errands, and typically life stuff that you don’t want to do on vacation. In a lot of ways, vacation is about escaping that stuff, right? That’s why you’ll see the references to Block Island in the article. We vacation away from our Aquidneck Island to a different island to just get away from that “life stuff.”
All that said, there is something to be said for getting to that disassociated vacation destination quickly and easily.
Does that make any sense? Is that helpful?
Your vacation destination is awesome. :) We also live in some kind of vacation location but I’m hardly a tourist in our own cities. I will be more motivated if people visit us so we can show them around! *Hint* *Hint* You already know my MO. I like exploring places I’ve never been to so I’m more inclined to vacation elsewhere. But I’m sure I’ll do a good job about promoting our area if I can play host more often as well!
It’s interesting, we live in the Dallas area and do very little of the “tourist” things, which I guess is sad on our part. Out of town friends think we go to Six Flags each week when we haven’t been in years(and if I’m lucky that trend will continue), or go to Cowboy games(too much $$$$) or Ranger games(too hot), etc.
It’s sad, but I think it is pretty common. When my wife and I left Silicon Valley she said, “We didn’t take advantage of all the wonderful things here.” I thought we did, but it’s tough. We’re getting better at doing that now. You may have noticed that I’m not posting as much in the summer as I used to. Our place is very seasonal, so I feel like we need to maximize that summer time.
Maybe if everyone made a point to schedule something new each week? Do you people would commit to fun?
living in orlando is NOTHING like vacationing here.
i live 12 miles from Disney World, 7 miles from Seaworld, and 17 miles from Universal.
enjoying the parks requires careful budgeting because if you don’t work for them [well, WDW and UO anyway] annual passes are EXPENSIVE.
tourists cause traffic, car accidents, are LOUSY tippers [many of my daughter’s friends are servers] they often treat the locals as if we lack brains, common sense, or possibly have other obligations [sorry, friend from home town, i am NOT taking a week off of work to drive you around. rent a car]
tourists can also be wonderful.