The Do Nothing Vacation

I recently came across a great post on the Lonely Planet blog called “How to Plan a do-nothing” vacation. Although I’m a budding quasi-provider of “do something” vacations, I have to say the post sounded quite appealing.  I was especially fond of tip #4 – what to bring…at least 4 of the following components:

• Swimsuit weather
• hammocks
• body of water
• lots of towels
• reasonable food within 200 meters of your bed
• cocktails in primary colors within 100 meters of your bed
• a vista that’s better than most TV shows
• a large variety of reading material in the following genres: humor, adventure, sci-fi, teenage wizards, biographies of people who didn’t die in an especially tragic way, superheroes being awesome, and horny vampires

I should note that the background on my computer’s desktop is the view from the bedroom of one of those bungalows that sits on stilts over a lagoon in Bora Bora. So, upon reading the post and looking at my desktop, I was immediately inspired for a do nothing vacation.

Of course, being in charge of a bootstrap start-up company leaves me lacking in the cash required for such a vacation but I made do with what I had:

1) Body of water within 4 m of my bed (bathtub)

2) Swimsuit weather (I do live in Florida…and it’s a nice 76 degrees in the house)

3) 1 towel

4) The unabridged Sherlock Holmes collection (not exactly as mindless as suggested, but short stories don’t require the commitment of a novel and the Holmes stories always seem to take me away from my own problems for 30 minutes).

It was actually pretty rejuvenating and a few hours later, I was sleeping soundly in my bed after having one of the most productive evenings in recent memory. So, don’t forget to take a “do nothing” vacation every once in a while – even if it’s a mini do nothing vacation. I’m still holding out for Bora Bora though!