Complaint: Post-Vacation Letdown

What happens when your vacation is so much better than the rest of your daily life? This is the conundrum.

There’s nothing wrong with my life, don’t misunderstand.

But to be somewhere where I have intelligent grown ups who have time to talk to me, who also help me take care of my kids, to be able to run by a beautiful river every day and drink wine with every meal (cooked by someone else)?

Well, yes, I’m back from Canada, and, natch, filled with longing. There’s just something about that place, especially the Maritimes, which scratches an itch I usually forget I have. (By the way, it's not "aboot". It's "aboat" or "abowwt." You'd think after years of teasing, people would get it right, but they never do.)

I didn’t grow up in the Maritimes, but I claim it. I lost my virginity there. That makes it homeland, doesn't it? I grew up in Montreal. But with family firmly established further east, my gravitational pull is now there. Home is where my mom is. And my step dad. And my kids’ cousins.

My kids and I had a truly idyllic vacation there. I’m feeling blue to leave the country of red and white. (Sorry.) It’s not that I don’t like it here; I do. It’s just not the same as there. And my family is there. And my memories are there. And my past is there. And my dreams are there.

Wow, waxing poetic on my first day back. And what’s with the melancholy?

The nice thing about my neighborhood here in the States is that people are almost as friendly as they are in the Maritimes. It’s nice to live somewhere where people are happy to see you, happy you’ve moved to “their” city, welcoming you with civic pride and open arms.

Silicon Valley, though filled with some lovely people that I dearly miss, doesn’t really embrace people that way; the population is too transient. I found one school that embraced my whole family and we stuck with it until I had to have my hands pried off it as we boarded the plane to move east. (Damn, that’s an awkward sentence. You get the idea.)

Travel always shakes up your perceptions and perspective, so of course this vacation was no exception. I think it was extra nice to get away because we’re still so barely here in our new digs that we don’t have the comfort and familiarity that I feel in Canada. So going there is even more comforting and familiar compared to our newly moved reality in the States. I’m lonely here. I was never lonely on vacation.

I’m probably idealizing things a bit, too, because I didn’t have most of my everyday cares and woes while on vacation. That’s definitional. And I know that I can’t stay on vacation forever. I’m not ready to check out of life permanently, so I have to face my responsibilities and, thus, reality.

My mom has a poster hanging in her basement office that says, in classic 70s style, “Bloom where you are planted.” Good advice, but what happens when you keep uprooting?

Ah well. Such is life. There are things that happen that don’t allow you to do exactly what you planned on doing, and that’s how it is. Mindfulness and Buddhism both would tell me to be where I am, now, and not dwell in past or future regrets or longing.

It’s just so fucking hard to be a Buddhist.

But isn’t that what the premise of the whole philosophy/religion is? Life is suffering.

It’s not "Suck it up" or "Repress it". It’s just, "Life can suck. And it can not suck."

And right now it sucks.

Have a nice day, eh!