Friday, September 25, 2009

Paralyzed by Indecision

Do you know how debilitating it is to be a "planner?" To be "organized?" To need to think through the details of every decision in life before doing anything, considering all possible positive and negative ramifications? After months of waffling in indecision, second guessing, and general whineyness (in my head, anyway), I finally decided that it was time for a vacation. Yes, internet, I waffled over whether or not I should plan and book a vacation for CPM and myself.

We're DINKs (double income, no kids). But the economy is in the crapper. CPM's job is with a family owned small business that is hanging on to life by the skin of its teeth. I work at a non profit, where 10% of the staff were laid off this year and the remaining staff got both no raise and a benefit cost increase, amounting to a pay cut. Ouch. We spent a lot of money on improving our house last year and vacationed indiscriminately. Then we bought a new car because I had to have one.

When I thought about all of this, I felt guilty for wanting to go on a trip anywhere. I felt guilty that I wanted to spend money on leisure. I felt like I should be socking away each and every spare dollar for... something.

I can't live like that. We have savings. We have emergency funds. We also have needs. I need a vacation. I need to lay on a beach and read a crappy book. So I did it. We're going back to Hawaii in January. (Dear internet robbers, my house will NOT be empty...we have three dogs, they stay home, and a whole family moves into my house to care for them.)

This will be our fifth trip to the fiftieth state. That seems crazy to some folks. But consider that I think it's crazy that people go to the same Jersey beach houses year after year. This is the same kind of crazy. Also, two weeks in Hawaii is less expensive than renting that Jersey beach house for a week. It's also more fun, in my mind.

The countdown begins. Aloha, bitches.

4 comments:

  1. Fun!
    I too, suffer from your planning curse. I can't tell you how many time I've opened and closed the "Disney World for Dummies" book. It's so intimidating! So many things to see and do. My current rationalization is that I will schedule things more thoroughly once I can book the various character meals and the bibbidty-boppity-boutique.

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  2. We should talk about scheduling Disney. In my numerous Disney visits, the last being with small children, I learned that serious schedules are for shit. Yes, schedule the character breakfast and bibbidty thing, after that, just plan what parks on which days, leave time every day to go back to your room and rest/nap for a few hours, and be prepared to rearrange everything around the kid. Also, large group coordination in Disney sucks. There's so much WAITING for everyone to be ready, to make decisions, someone's hungry, someone has to pee, blah blah blah. Be prepared to just tell people what YOU are doing.

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  3. Oh yes. I told my sisters that I'm scheduling things and they can come along if they want.
    Also, I just want to map out which days we'll go where. I don't plan on having a rigid timeline.

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