As I continue to recover from my vacation, I’ve been thinking more about how I’d go about making a vacation that I don’t need a vacation to recover from, and the solution may be a “staycation,” taking a break without going anywhere. Then I can get good sleep because I’m sleeping in my own bed and I don’t get tired from the return trip. But the trick is to make it different enough that it feels like a real vacation and not just being at home with more goofing off. This will take some strategy.

For one thing, it would take some prep work. The house would need to be clean enough that I wouldn’t feel like I should be doing housework, so the staycation would be preceded by a day or so of good cleaning. I’d also want to prepare some food in advance. I might go out for breakfast one or two days (since we do have some good breakfast spots I’ve been wanting to try), but I might make some waffles to throw into the toaster and have a pretend hotel breakfast buffet, and I’d want some ingredients for a lunch to pack for a picnic, maybe some special treats to enjoy in the evening.

Then it would take planning and even scheduling to make sure I do stuff instead of just hanging around and goofing off. Fortunately, I live in a tourist attraction kind of place, so it’s very easy to play tourist locally just by walking around town. There’s even more stuff to see within an hour of driving. I think on my hypothetical vacation, I’d start with a day trip so that coming home could feel like checking into a hotel (I might even put a chocolate on my pillow and fold the toilet paper end into a little triangle). Then walk downtown to go out to dinner. The next day would be an active day, taking a picnic and going on a hike in the park or doing some kind of local sightseeing, with a relaxing evening. I’d try to schedule the relaxation to make sure I do it — actually watch the movie or read the book and do the spa treatments. Maybe a less intense day of just sitting on the deck or porch and reading. And then a short day trip to give the sense of leaving and coming back home with the “hotel” becoming a house once more, but with a relaxing evening to unwind from the whole thing. I might try limiting online time so I can do things that are fun but not get into the mindset of work.

I’ll have to see where I can fit that in this fall, since I’ve scheduled for a light month and I’ll be wanting to hit the usual places to see the autumn colors. One of my day trips can be heading into the mountains, then there’s a park nearby with interesting rock formations that I’ve been wanting to visit. I’ll just need to find a stretch of time with the right weather for it. I want to try to do several consecutive days instead of grabbing a day here and there so that I can properly unwind. I’ve read research that says it takes about three days of a change of the usual pace before you actually start to reset.

Of course, I can’t really turn my brain off. It’ll be playing with story ideas, but that’s part of what I do for fun. I’d probably come out of this with several new ideas or with something I’ve been working on entirely replotted.