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Now is the time for all tireless, fearless, perhaps selfless adventurers, or merely wannabes as regards all of the above, to wonder where the days went.
And so this is September. What have you done? Another summer over (all but) and a new one … so far off.
Apologies to John Lennon. “Happy Christmas” was infinitely more elegant. But summer regrets, we all have a few.
Didn’t get done half what you intended to, visit half the places you meant to?
Take heart; there’s always next year, when, with any luck, we’ll be almost done having to say “in this economy.”
But at least one good has come of the all-too-erratic summer of ’09: Apparently, by July, the term “staycation” – you know, the thing people suffering through “this economy” take, by leaving their jobs for a week but not their homes or at least the general vicinity of their hometowns, had run its course. We’d moved on. Wanted something fresher.
Some of us, even, were so sick to death of hearing “staycation” uttered we acted rashly and booked two weeks in Europe. Or an all-frills cruise. Or else we just toyed with a term we hated to admit kind of worked.
Consider, for example, the “haycation,” to which New York Times writer Kim Severson recently introduced readers. She wrote of spending $332 a night for the “privilege” of working someone else’s farm – picking the produce and milking the cows – and calling it a vacation/education.
Trendy, it seems. More people are doing it. Could it be the new “volun-tourism?” Don’t save the world on your trip but light one candle for the little guy, in this case the farmer?
It all set me to thinking. By spring of next year, assuming the economy is better but not by much, we might need a new word to convey how we’ve respectably (or not) spent our paid time off. I thought I’d fly through the alphabet willy-nilly to make suggestions:
• Braycation: Book a middling trip you can actually afford and choose so-so accommodations and box lunches but come back and go on, donkeylike, about how amazing it was and how everyone should do what you did.
• Daycation: Take how many ever weeks you have, multiply them by five and take that many day trips. It’s a staycation, except you must leave your house for at least 12 hours.
• Feycation: Never leave your house. In fact, take a couch-filled laycation back to 2008/09, when Tina Fey was all that. Watch “Saturday Night Live” classics on DVD. Wear your hair like Sarah Palin. And eat moose burgers.
• Jaycation: Go bird-watching. For inner peace.
• Naycation: Be like so many folks: Do so much running around before, after and even during a trip, and get so little actual sleep, you hardly feel rested upon return – camping anyone? — or be sure to crowd your luggage with a laptop, air card, iPhone, etc.
• Paycation: Use your time off from one job to do freelance work in another, temporary one. Plug the holes in your personal economy. Call it a wash.
• Praycation: Make a pilgrimage. Or build a shrine in the yard. Beg for better days ahead.
• Saycation: Go absolutely nowhere, saving all kinds of money. But Google some really exotic place, memorize all the pertinent details, print off some photos, return to work and say you did.
• Weighcation: First, stuff yourself with moose burgers on your laycation, then check into fitness camp. Or get with the times and become a “big is beautiful” reality-show contestant.
• Zzzzzaycation: To heck with it all. Stay in bed all week. We all need more dreaming time.