Vacation

I was not able to take a vacation this year during the usual time of just after the holidays. This is because of the failure of my company and the resultant compromised finances. However, I've crunched the numbers and I should be able to save up enough to go on one at the usual time next year. The vacations I take have a few common ingredients. First of all, they are solely my financial responsibility. Second of all, I always take along at least one friend, which is actually the overwhelmingly common arrangement over the years. As airport security became a nightmare for many people, including unique tortures for fat guys, recent years have seen a third element come into play in that my vacations are all now road trips. By my own admission, I am not a terribly good driver and have poor common sense, so those who come with me all expenses paid are, in a sense, earning their keep by doing the driving and keeping me from bumping into furniture and the like.

My vacations have had a few different destinations over the years. These have included Saint Louis, Kansas City, Bloomington, Las Vegas, and Orlando, the last of which being the one to which I aim to return next year. Las Vegas and Orlando are the ones to which I find myself most frequently drawn. With Las Vegas, it's not the gambling, but it's pretty much everything else. The shows are the best I've ever seen anywhere in the world, the culinary adventures on offer are higher quality, more varied, and more convenient than any I've ever experienced, and, until a few years ago, there was even a Star Trek theme park. Orlando is about the theme parks, through and through. Riding those rides, seeing those sights, and existing in an environment carefully engineered to maximize human happiness is one of the most fun things any human being can do. Everybody likes to take vacations and I don't really think my reasons for taking them have been any different than anybody else's, up until recently.

Up until recently, vacations were all about fun for fun's sake. Heck, I'm still young enough that the vast majority of my life entailed planning vacations around summer, winter break, or spring break. Vacations were a thing you did when you had the time and money to do them because they're fun and fun is enough reason to do everything. Well, I expect they'll still be fun, but there's more to it for me now. I reds a quote from an actress once about how, when she first moved out to California, she and her acting friends would get a season's pass to Disneyland and, whenever things were tough, go out to the park as a way of boosting morale. Something in that sentiment makes sense to me in my depressed state. As the years go by, I can't imagine that it will get easier to live with my disability. On the contrary, it will be viewed as more and more unusual that I am single and unemployed. So it will be important to have a time of the year to boost my morale. Now more than ever, I'm gonna need a vacation.

-Frank