vacations

i haven't taken a real vacation in about 5 years. by "real vacation" i mean one in which i don't have a work schedule that accompanies the travel. this makes enjoying the day to day life rather important for me, otherwise i'd probably burst into a sputtering flame and spend the rest of my life making oragami art at the local "rest home". so i try and live life with a bit of an edge. (a downside is that i tend to exhaust people who get too close for too long.)

next week i'm at FISL, where i'll get to see many of my free software friends again such as helio, mad dog, j5, jono and many others. hopefully i'll make a few new ones, too. once fisl wraps up, however, i'm taking 3 days off. the laptop shall remain off and i'll attempt to release my mind from all things work related. a vacation! let's see how successful i am.

it's going to feel a bit odd, i'm sure. i've been trying to pin down why it is i don't take vacations. perhaps because i feel there are too many things to do and people who i want to be with. perhaps because i've been stuck in "think and do" mode ever since i can remember, seemingly whether i like it or not.

it really hit me, though, when p. asked me why i don't get to have weekends. and again when m. said over lunch yesterday that her roommate observed that p. never stops: he's constantly doing something, often multiple somethings at once. nature or nurture, i don't know, but sometimes it is scary looking into the life of someone who resembles me in so many ways inside.

lately i've been doing a bit of creative writing, so i might take that with me. when i was in heathrow airport at the end of last week i put the headphones on, cranked the music and started writing. i got into something of a full body bobbing motion thing: legs popping, heading jogging, shoulders trying to keep up... i'm pounding away on the keyboard in this stream of consciousness piece when i notice a "presence" and look to my right and there's this kid, maybe 10, leaning over the back of his chair so his face is maybe a foot away from mine. he was just starting at me with this straight face and huge eyes. i smiled without stopping the typing (gotta keep the stream going, after all) which i think freaked him out a bit more than he already seemed to be. i can only wonder what he thought was going on with the crazy man in the seat behind him =)