Take it easy

I can tell by the way that my pink parts have turned a nice, crispy brown that it’s about time to take a vacation.

And when I take one, hopefully it will be with my wife.

You see, prying me away from work is almost tantamount to prying me away from my nice, crispy brown parts. Because I am addicted in an alpha-male, obsessive-compulsive, nerd-royalty type of way to my jobs. All seven of them.

Ever since I decided to ditch the 9 to 5 drudgery of corporate life and the horror of paisley neckties and pleated pants that came with it, I have worked for the past 56 dog years as a multi-tasking entrepreneur to support my wife’s portfolio investments, my three-year-old daughter’s Harvard Business School educational plan and my soon-to-be-born son’s comic book collection. As such, I continue to work as a child laborer hawking plots of land in my metro-Tagaytay for my family’s real estate development business, as an organizer of two weekend food markets in Bonifacio Global City and Alabang whose objectives are to build camaraderie, waistlines and cholesterol levels, as an editor for a men’s magazine of wit, irreverence and purty pictures (that has not yet attracted the attention of the CBCP), as a Philippine STAR weekly columnist who attempts to be humorous on demand with an ensemble cast of his yaya, his three female readers, his No Girlfriends Since Birth and his DOMs, as an author who regurgitates his column into books which he shamelessly plugs in this column and gets his mom to buy several hundred copies of the book so that it makes the bestseller list, as a host spending inordinate amounts of laway on television shows, corporate events, press launches and wedding receptions, as an occasional actor hamming his way through teleseryes and independent movies, and as an almost nonexistent Ashtanga Vinyasa teacher (Really. I can even touch my toes). And, when time permits (and after Jessica Zafra relinquishes her throne), as a part-time world conqueror.  

All this work requires my life to be a little bit more fast-paced (my life is in perpetual fast forward), a little bit more stressed (but at least no more hair jokes thanks to Svenson), and a little bit more schizophrenic (Who? Me? Yes, you).

And, God bless my wife, she is forcing me to take a short break or else she will take me to an institution. Again.

Unfortunately (for my wife), I take my vacations as seriously as my work. I am of the belief that a vacation is only worth it once you have sucked the teat, marrow, and any other pink parts dry of any vacation spot before you can truly say that a vacation was well worth it. Any vacation we take must be thoroughly researched, well planned and a good value for money. To do this properly, I draw up a checklist that crams in every possible landmark, historical site and red light district into our schedule; I double-check train schedules, review travel maps, take several hundred pictures and copious amounts of notes on every tourist spot, wear running shoes, gorge on extra vitamins, use both sides of my underwear and bring a travel-size yaya so we can maximize our level of enjoyment. But if I, este, if “we” are unable to visit all the several hundred places that I have painstakingly included in my travel itinerary, then I have failed in making my (er, “our”) vacation worth it.

On top of that, I have certain requirements if I am to vacate with peace of mind. I can only vacate with my Mac, my iPad and my Blackberry surgically attached to my person lest I go into social media withdrawal (Contrary to what heathen bachelors might think, withdrawal is not always a good thing). Doesn’t my wife understand that I need all these gadgets to keep me occupied lest I start hearing those voices in my head again? Much to my chagrin, I have since had to detach myself surgically from my electronic equipment because my wife has threatened to unilaterally withdraw domestic bliss privileges that appear in our marriage contract.

Can you believe my wife!? When we go on vacation, all she wants to do is take things slowly: enjoy the view, spend time in a cafe while watching people walk by, walk aimlessly in a public squares holding hands while making smoochie-smoochie, engage in church-approved activities that will cause us to use up our precious energy that could have otherwise been used to switch off our alarm clocks and wake up later than usual and leave the hotel after lunch. My wife actually wants to take a vacation during our vacation!? God help us.

We only discovered each other’s different vacating philosophies in transit during our honeymoon vacation. While I, este while we were briskly walking from St. Peter’s Square to the Coliseum, my wife insisted on taking a seat along the sidewalk to catch her breath.

“But sweetheart!” I whined. “We are wasting approximately P2,589.33 for every minute of downtime. We won’t be able to catch the exhibit of the ancient Roman latrines before closing time!”

I shook my head like I was having a seizure. “Didn’t I tell you that you that you should’ve drank those four cups of espresso before leaving the hostel this morning, like me?”

My wife clenched her fists. “Now our vacation is ruined!”

And that’s the last thing I remember before those Italian medics used the Jaws of Life to pry off my wife’s fingers from my neck.

An important life lesson to make sure that all your nice brown parts are not grievously harmed during a vacation with your spouse is when you’re able to appreciate that her perspective when it comes to vacations is just as legitimate as your own. So even if you think that you’ve wasted 752,000.15 seconds (with an interest per annum of six percent) worth of vacation time because she insisted that you both oversleep, take too many bathroom breaks (as opposed to wearing adult diapers) and spend several hours of wild, sweaty, animal church-approved activities instead of chasing down obscure tourist sites with entrance fees that were oppressive to third world tourists, it doesn’t mean that your idea of a vacation was any better than hers (because, like any housebroken husband knows, any idea of hers is much better than yours).

“What’s the point of taking a vacation if we don’t know how to enjoy it?” I once complained to her in a pre-departure area before she felled me with horse tranquilizers. But hours later, when I woke up inside the overhead compartment, I realized that that the point she wanted to make was that vacations don’t always have to have a “point.” A vacation can be spent remaining idle for hours, smelling the proverbial daisies, and feeling the fungus grow between your toes.

To resolve our vacation dilemma, my wife confiscates my watch, stores all my gadgets in a time-lock vault, has me involuntarily restrained, and then has us taken to holiday spots where the only itinerary requires that we vegetate on a beach, photosynthesize and spends days in (shudder) inconsequential consequence. 

And while she has me on hallucinogens to convince me that I am enjoying myself, we’ve been inconsequential so far in the whale shark-infested beaches of Donsol, Sorsogon, the crystal clear blue waters of Bantayan, Cebu, the shallow lagoons of Amanpulo, the majestic coral rock formations in Balesin, Quezon and the sparkling white sand beaches of Sicogon Island, Iloilo. If I was any more inconsequential, I just might blink out of existence.

But I grudgingly admit that there is actually merit to my wife’s vacation philosophy (but don’t tell my wife). Those inconsequential vacations have helped lower my stress-related LDL cholesterol levels. They have quieted several voices in my head. And they have made sure that all the plumbing in my nice, brown parts is in working order.

For our future vacations, I will try to vacate more inconsequentially against my better, este, personal judgment. I will try to lie idly on a beach and watch the clouds roll by while not worrying about not checking the minute-by-minute news feeds on Twitter. I will try to sip that sunset margarita without worrying if my wife hid my cell phone in a place that is waterproof. And I will try to make sure that the only gadget that I take along with us during a vacation is the one that I was born with.

Then I will take my vacation from this vacation.

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