There are two kinds of vacations: the kind where you’re trying to actually do something—explore a foreign country, see the sights, climb the mountain, learn to scuba dive/ski/blow glass, and the kind where you do nothing at all—you lie out on a beach, read the paper by the pool, or simply slowly decompose in front of the TV. In the movie Office Space, when asked what he would do if he had a million dollars, the antihero replies, “Nothing. I would relax, I would sit on my ass all day… I would do nothing.”

When I was a freelancer, and I spent my days alone at home typing on my computer, and the only deadlines I had were the ones I volunteered for, the idea of a passive vegetative vacation seemed utterly pointless. I longed to do things, active things, to have adventures and rack up new experiences. I had on my side psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, who finds that although most people spend their leisure time doing “unstructured activities,” they are more likely to achieve that state of blissful engagement he terms “flow” when they’re working on a task with a clear goal.

I still tend in that direction—in 2006 I went to Mexico twice, to California three times, to Hong Kong, and to Thailand, and in 2007, I went to India, where I visited my family and went on a tiger safari, and learned to scuba dive in the Turks and Caicos Islands. But now that I spend my days working in an office, with a snarling three-train commute bookending my days, I’m much more sympathetic to people who think the point of a vacation is to pass out on a beach. After a stressful close, the thought of just vegging out in front of the TV holds a delirious appeal.

On tiger safari in Kanha National Park, the setting for Kipling's The Jungle Book

And indeed, when my vacations take me home to my family in Canada rather than to some exotic foreign locale, I find myself doing just that. Nothing gives me a greater sense of being free and unburdened than staying up into the wee hours of the morning watching old movies on TV. That’s it—that’s my fantasy. And that’s exactly what I do when I’m home. My mom kisses me goodnight and eventually my brother turns in too, and then it’s just me happily biodegrading on the couch. My mind is turning to slime and it never felt so good.

I do this too whenever I go to another city and stay in a hotel. I’m mesmerized by the TV. I go to my friends’ weddings in other cities and offer to give toasts, but I always show up bleary-eyed because I’ve stayed up late the previous night watching HBO.

Maybe it’s because it symbolizes an easier existence. I’m a striver, and if I have a free moment alone in my ordinary life in New York, I try to spend it productively, doing work, reading a book that will improve me, or catching up on my correspondence. Maybe it’s because it brings me back to those weekends during high school, having sleepovers with my friends, ordering pizza, staying up watching reruns of the old Star Trek.

That’s my fantasy—to give up ambition. I imagine with envy the people who work from 9 to 5, who, when they’re done working, they’re done—no staying up late writing a journal. There are only sixpacks and Monday Night Football, or bottles of port and French movies. Forget moving to a country house, if I ever bow out of the rat race, all I’ll need is a couch, a TV, and a Netflix account.

Posted: April 2nd, 2008 under Uncategorized.
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The other night my roommate and I were having a conversation and the subject of goals came up. I had been reading about the state of effortless concentration and enjoyment that psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has famously termed “flow.” Flow occurs when you’re so absorbed in a task that you lose track of everything else. You fall into the rhythm of your activity so completely that all distractions melt away, and may even lose track of time. I mentioned that having a clearly defined goal is an important component in achieving flow.

Read the complete post at Psychology Today’s Brainstorm.

Posted: March 3rd, 2008 under Uncategorized.
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