How Do People Vacation?

I flew to visit my mother in Las Vegas a little over a week ago, and I took a vacation — or, at least, I attempted to take a vacation. After about ten minutes of supposedly lounging by the pool on the first day, I typed “how to relax?” into Google. Then, I revised the search: “how to relax on vacation no drugs.” One of the suggestions that popped up was “soak in water,” but after I made the ten-foot trek to the pool and stood waist-deep in the shallow end, I was still preoccupied with the concern that I was doing relaxing wrong. Was I just really supposed to just . . . be in water and do nothing? I started picking leaves out of the pool.

Is it truly the case that there are human beings who are actually capable of taking a real vacation?

Things need to get done, which means I have to do things, so if I am not doing things, then I am worrying that things aren’t getting done. And I’d rather be miserable doing things that I find unenjoyable than worrying about things not getting done. Here’s what is even worse: If I’m not busy executing tasks, then I worry that other people are doing things incorrectly, which means I’ll have to put in extra effort later to fix everything. So I’d rather just be the person to do a bunch of stuff in the first place, hence why I always have a long list of tasks each day.

But when I was in Nevada, I knew that September would be crazy-busy for me: I often report on higher education, and school will be back in session, so I’ll (I hope) have lots of stories to write. Aside from what will likely be a few busy weeks of reporting on universities, I have to switch apartments in Washington, then move to England. (I’ll still write for NR!) Given my full schedule for this month, I was aware when I arrived in Vegas that I needed to “chill out” so that I could avoid a “crash out,” which I believe is the terminology that the cool youths use these days.

As an officially certified Control Freak, I established “vacation” rules: Don’t visit the National Review website, don’t check the Slack messages, don’t open any work emails, and don’t listen to any podcasts that generally discuss politics. (I broke all of these, but only a few times.)

I am pleased to report that I actually did sort of detox from the news cycle; my mom mentioned things in passing that she had heard about, and I saw some updates on the televisions at sports bars. But I generally didn’t know what was going on in the world, which was a radically different living condition for me.

Still, I didn’t exactly stop working: I mentally pre-wrote a bunch of articles for National Review (which I’ll type out in the coming days), I began drafting a fiction novel about a feminist commune (which nobody will ever read because I’ll probably never actually finish it, or because a finished version won’t actually be worth publishing), and I took an unofficial cooking class with a celebrated chef who is a long-time family friend (while taking detailed notes so that I could maybe draft a cookbook for him). I helped with a nonprofit organization I am affiliated with, Princetonians for Free Speech. I also knit about half of a sweater, realized the dimensions weren’t right for my size, then restarted — so I now have about a quarter of a new sweater. I finished two books. My Amazon U.K. account has a pre-saved basket that I’ll order upon landing in England, and I have several lists on the Wayfair U.K. site of potential furniture for each room — none of which was the case before I landed in Nevada. If anyone needs a detailed chart comparing which U.K. credit cards are best for earning British Airways points so that you can get free upgrades or checked bags, I can send you the one I’ve just made. Likewise, I also researched affordable cameras and watched tutorials on how to optimize the settings for each one. (If I made scrappy YouTube vlogs about being a doctoral student at Oxford, would anybody watch? I honestly need an artistic hobby that doesn’t involve reading or writing.)

So did I really take a vacation? Although it is true that I have some tan lines, my concealer shade — aptly named “linen” — still suits me. Perhaps all this means that I exhibit enough symptoms to be a “workaholic.” Or maybe this warrants a more serious diagnosis that is listed in the DSM-5. I don’t know where this cluster of personality traits came from, or whether there’s a good twelve-step program for it. A casino in Vegas could probably initiate a bet: “When will Abigail crash?” But until that fateful date, I really don’t know how to live in any alternative fashion.