Do You Need a "Vacation"?

I can't count the number of times friends have suggested to me that I need a vacation. While I'm inclined to agree, the truth is that the nature of my work is that research questions tend to try to fill any moment where my mind is not already thinking of something else. So the idea of me going on "vacation" is just as much mental for me as it is physical. To me a vacation is a way of relaxing to the point where I'm either thinking of positive thoughts or I've at least found a way to not think about whatever negative thoughts are trying to get me down. So here are a few ways that I take my "vacations".

• Work

In my opinion, my tendency to overwork is not always a bad thing because I sometimes turn to work to provide relief (or a "vacation") from the seemingly unsolvable problems of my life (relationship stuff, employment issues, health related stuff, family matters, etc). When I've got a good lead on a problem, it provides a flow of thoughts that keeps my mind busy for hours at a time and this can be such a relief from those issues that its a welcome "vacation". But then the question becomes why don't I get good leads whenever I'm stressed out? Sometimes, the work can be stressful because I'm not progressing fast enough, or because I find a counterexample to an idea, or for a variety of other reasons. So then what should I turn to?

• Conversations

One of my favorite "vacations" is an ol' fashioned conversation, whether it be with long time friends or somebody I just met at the bar. Sometimes, the procedure of sitting and talking to somebody else can else can seem to relieve a thousand burdens. Sometimes I don't even talk - I'll just sit and listen and hear stories that I can relate to. I think I read something somewhere about this being the human need for companionship, not necessarily on a bedroom sense, but more in a sense that you are not alone in this world, and you are not the only one who sees the world in a certain way.

Conversations, though are not without their limitations. One of the problems with conversations is that you don't really know where they'll lead (I guess thats a good thing and a bad thing). Sometimes a joke is misinterpreted; sometimes the other person will just want to vent (which isn't really a problem, unless you entered the conversation with a "no venting here" attitude); sometimes they want to vent about something you did (which can be really unpleasant, and probably not gonna provide that "vacation" type feeling); or sometimes they're (or you're) just not in a talkative mood. So if talking to a friend won't do it, what else is there?

• Books

Lately I've gotten a lot of relief from reading books. The titles come mostly as a recommendation after a conversation with friends. After talking about whatever's on our minds, the friend will generally follow up with "you know, you sound like you'd be interested in reading ...". I'm not often disappointed, although I do know of one book that was recommended to me where I probably should have been more considerate of the recommender's feelings when I was asked how I liked it. 

I haven't decided the type of books that I like best, though, I do tend to get more of a "vacation" from works of fiction. Aside from taking me from the here-and-now (which most books tend to do), works of fiction (particularly sci-fi) have the ability to take me outside even the laws of the universe. Suddenly I can spend 500 pages imagining I'm the son of a Greek god (ala the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series), or a wizard (ala the Harry Potter series), or that I have mutant powers (ala the Gone series). Most of the nonfiction I read gives me different perspectives and philosophies on life. I find those interesting and use them as good food for thought. MLK's autobiography and book "Strength to Love" are great examples of this. So is the book I just finished, James Weldon Johnson's "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man". The main thing that interests me about biographies and autobiographies is the sequence of events that (at least in the writers eyes) helped chisel them into the person they grew to be. And again, thinking about their lives allows me to not think about my own.

• Music

Those first three things I mentioned I normally normally take some time. Sometimes I only have a few minutes, if that, and still need to relax. This is especially true when I'm doing something like programming or debugging a program, or even grading. These are tasks that need to get done (hopefully quickly), so its not really easy for me to do work, hold a conversation, or read a book while doing them. So another of my favorite "vacations" is just music. The selection depends a lot on my mood and setting. For example, I try not to listen to Tupac in the office too much (even with headphones) because I don't think my officemates will get the same relief from his lyrics (if they overhear it) as myself, but most of my 70s stuff is fair game. 

I'm sure that others find this relief in different ways. So I'm curious, what provides a vacation for you?

What are you reading?

Over the past two years, I've really increased my reading. At first it was more of a religious thing - reading the Bible and different philosophical books ("If God is Love" and "Critique of Pure Reason" come to mind). Then it turned to historical reading - reading biographies and autobiographies of the of people I respect ("Born to Rebel", "The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.", "Dreams From My Father", etc). And while these first two sets of books were enjoyable to read, they were not nearly as much fun as what I read (for the most part) now - just general stuff generally off the NYT bestsellers list or stuff that my friends are reading. I've really grown to appreciate fiction. I grew up watching movies, which are mostly fiction so this is not surprising to me. But movies are so limiting on our imagination. We can't see the picture in our way because the director/producer gives us a picture and says "this is how you're supposed to see it". The beauty of a book is that there is so much left unsaid in the book that its left to the reader to wonder about (different facial expressions, if the speaker uses hand gestures, how deep the speaker's voice is, etc.).

My reading has really increased over the past few years. Now I can probably get through a good book in a weekend, and another good book if I read during weekdays over lunch or dinner or on a walk. That said, I now get into a lot of conversations about books. A lot of these are of the type, "well if you liked this one, you'd love ...", or "in this book, I could really relate to...".

I recently had a talk with some friends about reading interests. And it kinda surprised me that these friends were more interested in different types of nonfiction than fiction. I don't want to sound like I'm an anti-nonfiction guy, but I do see certain limitations in nonfiction. My main hindrance (and this is kinda why I diverged into fiction in the first place) is that it seems that most of the nonfiction books that I've read have a format of "here's whats wrong with the world and here's how to solve it", or more particularly "here's whats wrong with you and here's how to make yourself better".

This certainly doesn't classify all nonfiction books. I remember when I first moved from philosophical books, I read a lot of memoirs and autobiographies because they seemed more practical. Still, these books are sometimes hard to read as well.

I remember when I was a kid (maybe third grade, maybe younger) and my principal decided to show the movie "Roots" to the entire school in the auditorium. That movie was so hard to watch, yet so hard to turn away. And due to my age, it was hard to discern that these people in the movie are not the people I see in my everyday life. I remember that at the same time, my father had a guy he worked with who would come over and help with his computer. I was young, but I could understand a lot of what he was talking about. He would always compliment me on how smart I was and say things to encourage me. Oh, and this guy was White. Well, I remember when I came home from seeing "Roots", the guy was at my house. I saw him leaving as I walked in the door. I greeted him as he left, then turned, went inside and told my mother, "mom, I hate him".

I realize today how naive that statement was, but watching "Roots" brought up so much pain and anger that it made it hard to channel it correctly. And when I'm reading some of these memoirs of my heroes, I find myself often having to pause, and calm myself down. Normally I see it as a situation where they are faced with racism and have to deal with it accordingly. In my mind, I'll ask, "how would I have handled this situation"? But when I can't come to a conclusion that yields a different outcome, it gets pretty stressful and all I can do is hope that times have really changed as much as people say they have. I even had this problem with "Kindred" by Octavia Butler, a work of fiction which many of my friends love. I thought Dana handled many of the situations similar to how I would, but the outcomes (particularly when she was whipped) just made me pause. That was one of the hardest books for me to read. I feel somewhat bad, because I know I shouldn't discount a good writer in Octavia Butler because I found the book painful, but I have hesitated to read another of her works.

To date, my favorite book is "A Lesson Before Dying" by Earnest J Gaines. This is what I look for in most of my books. I like it so much that I use it as a basis for future books. So far I haven't found anything that touches on all the topics that this one does. In particular, I love the debate about Atheism vs Christianity and saving the guy's soul. Thats such a relevant debate, and instead of telling us how to think the book does a good job of describing both sides of the debate and the conflict that the main character is in. I really wish there were more books on this level. Maybe there are, and thats why I continue my search. 


But I'm curious to know what others are reading.