I just got back the other week from spending a week’s vacation in Miami Beach. A love of the beach and the ocean is one thing I inherited from my father. Vacations and time off are one of the positive outcomes from returning to full-time employment back in 2016.

While I always balk at first about spending money to go somewhere for vacation, I always enjoy myself because I find getting away from things more important as I get older.

Doing nothing isn’t so bad in limited quantities

It takes a beach chair and sand for me to stop and do nothing. This vacation was no different. It was nice to lie on the beach, read, and take in the salt air. I read some books just for fun and tune out my professional, personal, and writing lives if just for a while.

And, oh yeah, I didn’t get any personal writing done at all. I scrawled some ideas in a Moleskine notebook I brought along for the trip. I’ll sort through those ideas once I get back to a regular cadence at work and on some freelance articles.

As it got closer to come back home, I had a harder time sitting still because I started to think about all the things I needed to kickoff upon return. It’s not all about work though. I’m starting on some long overdue home renovations.

Reading for pleasure is a good thing

Doing the work I do, writing about the topics I write about, I’m reading voraciously to stay on top of things. It’s how I keep pace. I’m passionate about the topics I write about, so much so I can read on the topics for pleasure, it means too often that I don’t read for pleasure like I once did. My trips to the beach give me the time to do that.

I read some action thrillers just for fun and Bitcoin Billionaires: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal and Redemption because I was hoping the book could tie some bitcoin history together for me. While the book read long, it filled in some gaps for me.

Setting my social media on autopilot

More than the beach had their noses in their cell phones. While I’d like to say I didn’t follow suit, I put my social media feed on auto pilot and fired off only a few tweets on my own.

Twitter is one of my main news sources for tech news so I missed a few choice headlines but caught up at the airport when I was waiting for my flight back.

Summer is over or so it seems

This is the third year in a row when I’ve taken a vacation in mid-August and just like past years it feels like summer is over when I get back from vacation. While the weather forecast for Virginia next week tells me otherwise but I have a renewed focus I need to follow through on some personal and professional goals.