Feels Like Vacation

We wanted to create a life we didn’t need a vacation from.

Why?

Because we really liked who we were on vacation.

When we were on vacation, we were adventurous. We were focused on each other. We made sure everyone was doing things that made them happy. We stayed up late. We played games. We played loud music in the car.

When we were on vacation, our main focus was to watch the kids, listen to the kids, play with the kids. Our evenings were relaxed and peaceful. Our mornings, even when rushed, were energetic and exciting.

When we were on vacation, there were no meetings, no evening commitments, no swapping off of kids and handing-off of duties.

We never dreaded a day, not even a Monday, when we were on vacation.


We wanted that life—a life we could live like we were on vacation.

We decided to take what we loved most about that time, about who we were, and to design a life as close to that as we possibly could.

We realized, it’s not doing the dishes or paying bills or answering calls or cleaning the house that we were trying to escape. It was all the other things—things not aligned to our values, things we dreaded doing, things that brought us farther apart instead of closer together—that really got in the way. It was all those little things that suck up our time and our money that we didn’t do when we were on vacation that we needed to strip away.

Turns out, that’s doable.

We’ve been able to create a life where we say yes to the things we enjoy doing—the things that bring us closer together, the things that excite us, the things aligned to our values. We’ve been able to create a life where we say no to the things that take us away from what we enjoy most, the things that pull us away from each other, the things that take up our money, and, more importantly, our time.

This past weekend we had no other commitment than to spend two days with our kids at Dollywood. We woke up early, we came home late, we played loud music in the car on the way there and back.

On our way home, our seven-year-old said, “Mom, I feel like we are on vacation.”