« The Same Age as Me | Home | The 10 Worst Cities to Raise a Family »
Vacation Rethink
February 27th, 2009 | Stephen Bailey
(via Facebook, MySpace, Digg, email and more)
Why the Rethink?
I woke up Saturday, the first full day of my vacation, to a surprise. My website (stephenbailey.com) had gone kerflooey. Some things were not where they should be, other things were gone altogether.
I panicked. Checking my traffic, I saw that there was a 1000% increase in traffic in less than 24 hours.
I was thrilled and horrified. The surge crashed my site.
I spent the rest of my Saturday with my host trying to figure out a solution. It was decided that I needed to move my site to a new, more stable server. Something that could not be automated. So began the tedious task of backing up all of my site files and uploading them to the new server. This took several days.
By Tuesday morning, most of the hardest work was done. I still had a few things to take care of to assure my site would (eventually) be up and running.
On Wednesday morning, I was in a panic once again.
I had all this time coming to me and I could've been (should've been) traveling. This week was to be the first half of my thirteen days of vacation. During this time, I was supposed to be embarking on a series of New York adventures. But with losing half of the time to my technical woes, I had not planned a single trip.
And then I realized that my second leg of these thirteen days was effected as well. During the last days of March. I was to be lounged on a beach somewhere with my notebook and pen, writing the next great American something or other. But again, I had not planned anything.
What is the Rethink?
As is usually the case with me when trying to make sense of life, I spent a couple of days planted in cathartic house cleaning, discarding of useless accumulations and making charitable donations of old clothes. Finally, last night, I decided on what to do with that last half of my vacation. Roadtrip!
It's not settled, but I'm thinking about renting an RV and heading south or west or both. If I do it, this trip would serve a dual purpose. A writer's retreat filled with the silence of nights and the hum of the road to inspire me, rather than the crashing of waves. It would also be good training for me. Yes, I am once again thinking of packing up and taking to the road.
As we three trippers try to define our trips, all sorts of ideas are tossed around. The one idea that keeps coming back to me is the idea of living a nomadic life for some undetermined length of time.
You see, for me, this site was never meant to be about traveling as much as it was about being on a journey. And as corny as it sounds, I need to finally find myself. My life is in a constant state of disarray. The cathartic cleaning I mentioned above is always a way that I kick off a life change. The problem is, I'm usually so drained after the preparations for change, that I simply never follow thru.
But if I'm going to be true to this concept of being on a journey, then I have to get one foot in front of the other and move across the floor.
What's Next?
I need to track down a rental place and take that first RV trip. Only then will I see if this physical incarnation of my journey is actually possible.
Stay tuned.
 TLT on FacebookBecome a fan and keep up to date with our shenanigans! |
Stephen Bailey | Comments Off
Vacation Rethink
(via Facebook, MySpace, Digg, email and more)
Article comments are closed, but you can still send comments to me