Recently, I took a week off to rest, at least that was the plan. I used to have a beautiful house that overlooked the ocean to go to, but it was sold. This was going to be mostly a staycation.
It’s harder to unplug when you are at home and so accessible to everyone and the internet. Staying away from my email is always the challenge when taking a break. I was expecting a few non-work relate emails to come through and needed to check for them. Unfortunately, I opened a few work emails as well. This took the first day off and made it feel like a usual weekend.
The next couple days were okay. I got some rest, took a couple naps but Tuesday Jer pulled our little RV out, only to find it was having all kinds of problems that it had never had before. Wednesday we realized the heater wasn’t working. We thought, “That’s okay because we could just plug in a small space heater,” until we found out none of the outlets worked.
I cried half the day away over cancelling our short excursion away from home that should have been an easy trip. In the end we got the heat working and onward we went to a more remote area of the state. When we stopped for gas, after searching for one that was actually still open, and found a the 50’s style pump sitting awkwardly on a broken piece of concrete and the mini-mart was just as run down. I wondered if it would even work.
Jer was inside waiting to pay, while I watched the numbers slowly tick by, sure it was going to take an eternity. Once we fueled up, got to our site, and unhooked, we went looking for forest land. What we didn’t expect was the amount of snow in the back hills which we hadn’t seen from the highway. We almost got stuck and helped someone else get unstuck. An adventure, right?
The next morning, we heading out again. We were surprise by how many people were living out there and how much junk surrounded most everyone’s property. The first location we went to check out was next to several rundown and vacant campers, except for one. A woman emerged and accusingly asked what we were doing there, then promptly shared, “Believe me, you don’t want to live here.” Mental health issues or not, we had to agree with her.
As we drove home from our trip that cost us three times what it should have and had multiple struggles, I decided to practice smiling. I’m sure my pasted on smile looked silly but I was practicing something we teach in our recovery groups. We don’t laugh or smile enough. I used my face to remind my mind to choose joy.