SAUNTERING VERSUS STRIDING

Vacations are amazing moments in time.   For a period of days, we are allowed to step out of who we are and become anyone we want.  It might be a surfer, a snow bunny, or perhaps a sailor.  For me it is pretty simple, I become unemployed.

Vacations allow me to saunter with no place to go versus striding with too many places to go.  It allows me to push work to the outermost edges of my mind (well almost) and sit there for a while.  It will be waiting for me when I get back.

Due to what has to be emotional heredity I am almost always anxious.  The usual junk fills my mind with a hum of “did I’s?”  I think I am good at my job, they gave me an award for it.  Although the brood is grown and has one of their own, I still hope to be a good mother to them.  A good daughter, a good sister, a good wife….the list could be almost endless if you let it be. But, I 'm not really talking about you, now am I?

Vacation is the time I really do stop at Starbucks and get the Salted Caramel Mocha thing that sounds so interesting.  I actually sit at Starbucks and drink it.  Maybe, I even take a book with me.  As well making me unemployed,  vacations tend to turn me into a reader.  Not my trusty electronic reader, the one that houses the Shades of Grey trilogy so on one could catch me reading it. Nope, real books, with pages.

Fall vacations tend to make me linger in front of displays like this and think "I should cook more."  It allows me the time to listen to the long, low melody of wind chimes I find hanging by the bookstore.

It also tends to be a time when I look at trees and architecture, snapping away at them with my camera. I see details I might not have noticed in a striding moment. Each click of the camera preserving the  moments when I saunter instead of stride.

I don’t buy too much stuff anymore on vacation.  The time for endless decorating has passed.  If one has to be buy something to be happy at my age, you might as well just give it up.  It ain’t gonna happen, so shut up about it already and be miserable.  I window shop, I saunter, I sip, I snap pics, I blog and shut the hum of anxiety radio off.

I like vacations!