How to Spoil a Perfectly Good Summer Holiday
Traps we’ll all fall into this summer
Go on Holiday
Why bother?
Holidays aren’t what they used to be, where you could just throw your life out of the window.
Now your life follows you wherever you go. So you may as well stay at home.
Find that broken sun lounger in the garage, drag out a case of cheap lager, find that book you bought at the airport three years ago, and go crazy.
Believe You’ve Got Time Off
You haven’t. Your life is not your own.
It’s Google’s.
Your life is an algorithm, a messaging service, a digital calendar and a star gazing app all rolled into one. Any autonomy you thought you had, you lost in 1985 along with your virginity.
You don’t have time off like you used to have. In the old days, holidays were holidays.
You could go and get blind drunk in a bar in Magaluf* and do all sorts of bad and crazy things, and there would be absolutely no record of it.
No videos, no photographs, no texts, no calls, no boring travel blogs. So you could wake up from your five-day bender, with no evidence you ever existed.
That’s a holiday!
(*Magaluf is a seaside resort in Mallorca, Spain, popular with Brits - and my cousins)
Have a BBQ
If you do stay at home, you’ll almost certainly have a BBQ.
Possibly ten.
In fact, you’ll probably suggest having a BBQ every night to fend off the intense boredom of not having the dull routine of work to guide you through the week.
At three o’clock in the afternoon, you’ll suggest to your family that we have a BBQ!
AGAIN!
So you rush out to the store to buy a bumper pack of burgers, buns, hot dogs, three crates of cheap beer, two cartons of cigarettes, and a cheesecake.
The same stuff you had the night before and the night before that.
But it’s OK because you’re on holiday! Even if you go back to work 5 stone heavier, wondering if it would have been better to go on holiday to Magaluf.
Do Work Around The House
Once you’ve definitely decided you’re not going on holiday, you hatch a plan to start doing some DIY.
Don’t.
All those stupid projects you’ve been putting off for decades, like building a tree house for your kids who’ve already grown up, or replacing a fence that isn’t even yours to replace, are a total waste of time.
You’re deluding yourself. Deluding yourself that you’re making good use of time. You’re not. You’re just chewing up valuable seconds until you die.
Better go to Magaluf and get blind drunk for five days. Even if you don't remember it, at least it’ll be fun.
Go to Magaluf
Realising that last year’s summer holiday staying at home, having constant BBQs put you in hospital, you book two weeks in Magaluf and instantly regret it.
One: The food is exactly the same as last year: burgers, hot dogs, cheap lager.
Two: You’re irritable because you can’t get into the novel you bought at the airport.
Three: You meet your next door neighbour and end up having to go for evening drinks every day (FUCKING NIGHTMARE!)
Four: You see your ex-wife with a younger guy.
Five: There’s absolutely nothing to do except sit on a beach with 5000 people you hate.
Write a Novel
Ah, yeah. Now we’re getting somewhere.
Why not book off two weeks this summer to start that novel you’ve always wanted to write?
Don’t do this.
Nothing will crush your spirits as much as setting out to write a book in your precious two weeks off.
The pressure will be intense.
One: You won’t have time
Two: You won’t have any inspiration.
Three: By the time you realise it’s a mistake, your holiday will be over, and you’ll hate yourself even more than you did before.
Get Fit
Are you serious?
If there was ever a more pointless way to spend a holiday, it’s dedicating it to a fitness program.
Up at 6, run, yoghurt at 7, stiff walk, salad for lunch, meditation followed by yoga, gluten-free biscuits at 4, swim at 5, low-carb dinner at 7 (no alcohol), another walk round the block at 8, bed at 9.
By the time you’ve got to the end, you’re so full of Golgi berries and mindfulness that the holiday in Magaluf a few years ago seemed like fun.
Start Writing on a Writing Platform
Once again, you’re thinking along the right lines. But this is not the time.
What are you going to write about?
Your holiday? You’re DIY projects? Or some whimsical nonsense about how you wished you had written more before. Before LIFE TOOK over!
Here’s a piece of advice.
NO ONE cares about what you should have done in your life before you joined a writing platform. Writing platforms are for listicles and nothing else.
Why?
PEOPLE LOVE THEM.
Why?
Because it’s better than reading (or writing) a novel.
Happy holidays.
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There is no vacation, but nothing is a waste of time, even if it isn't fun or productive or thought provoking or moving forward or backward or filling your face or other apertures or reading or writing or lounging or meditating. Right? Am I close? WEI WU WEI
Magaluf is somewhere in Europe, I take it?