Friday 40 for 40s - #17: real life

Items #4 and #34 that I'm learning I can't change is:

Vacations are not real life.  You always have to come back to reality
and
Once you live anywhere for an extended period of time, it becomes normal and ceases to be exotic

I love a great vacation.  The best ones for me generally involve a beach or going somewhere iconic.  To my recollection, all the vacations we've taken have been amazing, and part of that is related to my attempts to make sure they are well planned out.  I always want to know that it's going to be a great place, great vibe, know where we're going and particularly if we're going somewhere with lots of amazing sights (New York, Chicago, etc), I want to make sure we get to the key places we want to see.

I know how important vacations are to my overall wellbeing, so I want to make the most of them, every time.  The challenge can be that in creating such a great experience and having such an amazing time, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking "why can't life be like this all the time?"

I have come to recognize and accept that vacations are not real life - in fact, if what I did on vacations were what real life was like all the time, then I'd stop appreciating them so much.  Instead, I've learned to appreciate vacations for what they are - a time of relaxing, doing things we love as a family, creating memories - and then taking the principles from those times (healthy rest, creating memories, having fun together) and infusing those into the flow of every day life.

While it's a lot harder to create those moments week by week, I recognize that there's always another vacation around the corner, so I don't need to put too much pressure on myself to try and emulate them in my every day life.

Along similar lines, I've realized I can be guilty of thinking "life would be better if we lived here" - especially when we've done trips to places like New York or stayed at a great beach house.  Moving to Toronto was an eye-opening experience with that mindset, though - we realized fairly quickly that once you live somewhere for a time, it ceases to become exotic and just becomes "home".  Real life.  That's not a bad thing at all, but it is another reminder to embrace where we are and recognize that if we were somewhere else, real life would follow us there, too, so how do we make the most of where we are, rather than wishing for something else.