Around this time last year, I was fantasizing about taking a trip somewhere. About entirely escaping from my day-to-day life and just going off to do any number of things. Maybe sit in a hottub in a remote cabin in some snowy woodlands somewhere. Maybe spend a night or two in a luxurious hotel room with a large bathtub so that I could finally immerse my entire frame in the water. Maybe just going someplace quiet and secluded so that I could finally just exist in silent peace for a while. Any of those, and more, would have been such wonderful experiences, but I just couldn’t get the money and the time together. Eventually, I did go on a summer trip with two of my siblings and two of our friends which ticked some of those boxes. It was nice to get away for a while and I hope to do something similar again soon. Probably not this year, what with the busy calendar I’ve got through the end of May, but someday.

It’s difficult not to fantasize about escaping my day-to-day life when I’m dragging myself through a final day before the weekend after the kind of busy, exhauting week I’ve had. I mean, if I had access to a hottub right now, I would go sit in that until I got so pruny that I felt like my body was folding in on itself. I just want to be empty-minded and comfortable in a place where none of my usual concerns or stressors can intrude on me. I just want some peace, some quiet, some comfort, and to let the world pass me by until I feel like I’ve had enough. Since I’m a pretty active person, I imagine I probably couldn’t put up with something like that for more than a couple days if I was by myself. I get too antsy to even enjoy shutting myself down for long periods of time. Getting things done, doing activities, all that feels too good to ignore for long. I’d need to bring a couple puzzles and lego sets with me if I wanted to get through more than a few days of this kind of relaxing isolation.

Perhaps the weirdest part of all this is that I can actually afford to do something like this for the first time in my life. I’m still keeping up my grueling work schedule, which is contributing to my current exhaustion for sure, but it means I could actually afford to get a fancy hotel room with a hottub or to rent out a small cabin somewhere. I could even do that this weekend, assuming I found something to my liking that is actually available. I imagine there are a lot of people who want similar things when we’re a month into a weird winter season, so there probably isn’t much available even though this is in that weird period between holidays when most people aren’t doing any kind of vacationing. But if there was, and I had the spoons to slap it together, and I had the ability to convince myself to spend the money rather than continue to squirrel it away for future bills and student loan payments, then I could leave tonight for a quiet, contemplative water-immersion-centric day by myself.

Still, as much fun as it would be to get away for a weekend right now, there’s a lot of stuff going on that I need to keep working on. All my various projects, trying to find replacement games now that I’m potentially never playing Dungeons and Dragons ever again, a household to maintain, plans for the future that require money (which frequently means not spending money by staying around my apartment turns into progress toward those plans), and also the fact that I have a pet bird who needs care and attention on a daily basis, who also wouldn’t be able to come on that kind of a trip with me. It is not easy to set life aside, even for a weekend, and the older I get, the more I realize that the ability to do that is the true luxury experience I want. Big bathtubs, hot tubs, serrene lake vistas, quiet forests, and peaceful isolation are all great, but being in a position where it won’t matter if I just don’t do anything for three days in a row is truly the most relaxing and expensive thing I will probably ever want.