BACK TO THE REAL WORLD: SOME THINGS I LEARNED ON VACATION

We returned to Seattle from the Bahamas last weekend, but it’s taken me until now to get around to actually downloading my photos and starting back with the blog posts. Both of my assistants have been away, one on vacation herself, and one out of town dealing with family issues. That means that I’ve been packing and shipping furiously on my own, and am just now getting caught up.

I thought it would be fun to kick off this new cycle of blogging with a list of a few things I learned while I was on vacation.

1. I really enjoy being in a tropical place. I like the heat and humidity. It’s liberating not to have to worry about dressing in layers or carrying a jacket around all the time, although it seems that some places in the Bahamas have adopted the US custom of using air conditioning to freeze their clientele. Fortunately, most have outdoor seating areas for those who didn’t bring a down jacket. If it’s 95 degrees outside, I can see cooling it down to 85 or even 80, but not 55! I will never understand why so many people seem to think they need to spend their lives refrigerated. I don’t think it will make them last longer. People are not picked vegetables.

2. I can drink coffee without sugar! I discovered this when I made coffee the first day and found that there was no sugar in the sugar bowl or anywhere else in the place. After a couple of days, it was OK.

3. I can run on a treadmill! I had been planning to run on the beach, but the beach was miles away and fairly inaccessible. I had forgotten to bring my running shoes, and it really wasn’t a good idea to run barefoot on roads with no sidewalk, possibly stepping on all manner of unpleasant things. There was a community workout room nearby with a treadmill, so I tried running barefoot on that. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected, and I got a good workout in every day I was there, ending up running two 5Ks at target race pace on the last 2 days. That’s much better than I can do at home, but it has inspired me to join the local community recreation center so that I can use their equipment a couple of times a week and probably more when the weather gets cold and stormy and the days ridiculously short in winter.

4. I can go for almost 2 weeks without obsessively checking my e-mail, texts, and news reports throughout the day. I got by with just checking my business e-mail once a day on my phone (when the wi-fi was working) and dealing with any pressing issues. Since I’ve been back, I’ve fallen into old habits, but have resolved to cut down on the number of times I check everything. It’s amazing what a time sink it is.

Stay tuned for the regular features to return, as well as the usual random things that I write about. 

[All photos are mine. Another thing I learned is that I can take decent photos with my phone and don't need to bring a camera when I travel.]

TWO WEEKS UNPLUGGED! CAN I SURVIVE?

Every fall when I teach a class of college freshmen, I have them do an exercise in which they spend a 24-hour period without their electronic devices. No phones, no tablets, no laptops, no cheating by going to the library and using a desktop dinosaur. About 10% of them typically report that they enjoyed the freedom of not having to deal with their devices and never realized how much time they had when they weren’t constantly checking social media and texting. The other 90% felt emotions that ranged from lonely to panicked – they all felt like something was missing, as if a part of them had been amputated.  I understand.

Now I’m in the same situation, but for a longer time. Husband Michael and I will be traveling in Ireland, no particular plans, just a basic 2-person walkabout. My US phone won’t work there, at least not without egregious roaming charges, so forget the phone. My laptop is clunky and I just spent almost 9 hours in the Apple store yesterday while it was being rescued from a near-death experience caused by some mishap that occurred during the simple replacement of a bad track pad. It has a new, updated operating system (the old one was destroyed), so some things work and some don’t. I think I’ll leave it at home while I’m gone, continuing the restoration activities once I get back to Seattle. I tend to travel as light as possible, so not taking a laptop or phone with me is pretty much typical anyway. 

I don’t mind missing my university e-mails - after all, it's summer - but my business e-mails are another matter. I don’t like to leave customers hanging for two weeks without a response. In preparation, I have put “vacation” messages on all of my e-mail accounts. I’ve also put discounts for free shipping (or partially free shipping for international packages) on the orchid website and the original boutique perfume website to help compensate for delayed processing of orders. I can’t implement this sort of discount on my Shopify website, which looks nice superficially but lacks a lot of the functionality of my cheap iHost ones. That’s a problem that I’ll deal with eventually, when I get back.

I won’t be posting anything on the blog until after the 20^th, when I return to Seattle, but look forward to getting back to regular posting by the last week of August. In the meantime, here’s wishing a happy rest of the summer to everyone!

[All photos of landscapes in the west of Ireland (where we'll be) are from Wikimedia. I won't have any photos of my own until I get home again and replace the utility that I use to download photos from my phone and camera, which isn't working after the repair disaster.]