Staycation vacation

Rod and I have been on Vancouver Island 1 whole month now. We are residents living like tourists which is the best way to discover one's new surroundings.

Scenes from the village of James Bay, a five minute walk from our place. This is where we do our grocery shopping, laundry and grab a coffee (I've discovered 5 coffee shops around the intersection that comprises the centre of the village).

Many cottage-like homes with English style gardens line narrow streets.

Fantastic fare to be found here: baking, local produce, honey, music
and even a  tarot card reader.

Drivers have to be alert for carriages, pedi-cabs, tour busses and sight seers
as well as for the young and old alike who just walk slower here.

I admit that this feels a little weird, this staycation that's really a vacation; no phone calls, no clients in need of emergency care, no one wanting to line up a job, workshop or appointment for next week or the week after that or the next...

Rod's taken to his retirement like a fish to water. Suddenly, free from the demands of customers and the estimating that filled evenings and weekends, he's read more books since we got here than he has during our whole relationship! And I used to think he was a non-reader, a trait, which for a Thacker - voracious readers that we all are - was incomprehensible. Years ago I found the most difficult challenge put before me during a vipasana retreat wasn't not talking. I loved that! That was a piece of cake. But, not reading, that was impossible. My eyes would lite on print everywhere: cereal boxes, t-shirts, boxes of tea and the little tab on the tea bags... I fixated on the washing instructions on the tags of my clothes.

This vacation finds me, at unexpected moments: in the middle of a shower, when I awaken, as I'm doing dishes, chomping at the bit to "make something happen". The underlying catalyst for this is a limboish feeling of dropping into space that washes over me now and again. I'm not the one retiring. I'm on vacation. But vacations have a beginning, middle and end and then you go back to work. With undetermined time, place and work to "return" to I feel eerily unemployed; redundant.

So, just as I acknowledged my compulsion to read and got back to the silence of my mind I feel my redundancy and get back into the headspace of vacation.

This time just for me, away from my practice, is precious. I tell myself there will be work again, clients will call and I will be able to remember how to do what I do.