What to Do on a Mini-Vacation
Who among us hasn’t come home after a long, hard day at work and said “Man, I need a vacation.” Unfortunately, we don’t always have the time or the money for a full-blown getaway.
Maybe you used up most your paid time-off recovering from a nasty bout of flu. Maybe you’re a prospective homeowner trying to save up a down payment for one of those Birmingham homes for sale you looked at last week. Maybe your kids just started a new year of school and you don’t want to interfere with their education.
Whatever the reason, your options are limited. That doesn’t mean you can’t squeeze in a short but satisfying mini-vacation. What’s a mini-vacation? How do you go on one? What are you supposed to even do during one?
Keep reading to find out.
It’s Not the Size of the Vacation but What You Do with It
Does size really matter? Not when you’re measuring a vacation in days and dollars instead of rest and relaxation. Many of us have, over the years, built up the idea that vacations have to be this huge extravagance: a week at Disney World, selfies on the Eiffel Tower, a fortune won and lost a Las Vegas casino.
Often, however, the bigger a vacation is, the more stressful it becomes. You end up spending the entire trip balancing and rebalancing your budget, standing in lines for overpriced attractions, rushing through your itinerary in a mad dash to cross every item off the checklist. When you finally get home, you end up feeling more tired than when you left and most of the experience was just a blur.
Vacations are supposed to be a chance for you to get away from your stresses and responsibilities, to break out of the rat race so you can return home refreshed, renewed, and re-energized. Instead of dealing with the chaos and expense of flying across the country and paying outrageous hotel fees, consider something simpler: a weekend in a rented lakeside cabin, a quaint farmhouse B&B, or right inside your very own home.
4 Steps to Joy: Sleep In, Chill Out, Unplug, & Overindulge
Let’s get this out of the way right now: you’re not going to be coming back from a mini-vacation with a phone full of cool photos or an armful of tacky souvenirs. The pleasures of a mini-vacation are humbler, yes, but they can still have a profoundly positive impact on your peace of mind.
When was the last time you slept in? When was the last time you stayed in bed all day and didn’t get up unless it was to go to the bathroom or to eat a bowl of ice cream? When was the last time you said to hell with putting together a fashionable outfit, styling your hair, and looking your best? When was the last time you forced yourself to ignore your email notifications, social media alerts, missed calls, and text messages. If you’re anything like most people, the answer is probably “too long ago.”
For once, do only and exactly the things that you want to do, not the things you think you should do or the things that other people expect you to do. Go on a shopping spree. Sit on the deck with a glass of wine and a good book. Binge-watch Netflix shows until you can recite every line of Stranger Things dialogue by memory.
A mini-vacation might not seem like anything special. It might even seem like a waste of time. Worst case scenario: you wasted a weekend. The next one is just five days away.
