It is hard for me to break my routine and take a vacation. I do not know how I got this way. During my first years of self-employment the only time I ended up taking off was a single week in the summer with the family in Vermont or occasional brief visits to see family. We grabbed a week to get married in January 2000, but have not yet taken the customary honeymoon trip. It is not only disrupting my work life that I avoid; I do not like to miss weekend soccer or basketball games. Relaxation nowadays does not come as easy as I would like.

This winter, however, I thought I had a breakthrough. We took a real vacation for once. I wanted to go somewhere warm with an interesting ancient history. I had never been to Mexico, so I picked the Yucatan. We made it a family affair – my wife, my brother, my wife’s sister and our daughter all went together. We based ourselves in Merida and drove all over the place, taking in numerous Mayan ruins and other sights. The best of the bunch, we felt, was Uxmal, but we also saw Tulum, Ek Balam, Chichen Itza, Kabah, Sayil, and Dzibilchaltun. It was enjoyable, and it made me wonder why I had been avoiding such adventures.

We decided that the only way to make it happen again is to plan the next one far enough in advance so the work schedule builds around it. Working with that theory, we planned another brief trip—a family gathering at my sister’s house in California. It was timed to correspond with spring break for my sister’s kids, and to overlap with my brother’s work-related trip to the Bay Area. My parents will arrive as well. Even though I am in the middle of a maelstrom of projects, the date has arrived and we leave today. I am sure I will enjoy it greatly once I get there, but it is going to be tough to switch gears and necessary to work remotely some of the time.

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