Vacation all I never wanted

My sister once went on vacation. I asked her why she didn't ask me if I wanted to go. I'll never forget her telling me, "but you don't like vacations" I was offended at the time, but as usual it got me thinking, "maybe I don't like vacations?"

I know, who doesn't like vacations? But, here's the thing. Vacations make me anxious. When I am at work, I know that for the most part, I have to go to work the next day. I'm not happy about it but at least I know what I have to do. When I'm on vacation however, that's where the dread sets in. The Friday vacation starts is wonderful, so full of promise of all the exciting things I'll get to do during my time off. Then the weekend, but that doesn't really count, since I'm always off the weekend. Sunday night is my absolute favorite and the high point of the week. I can say to myself, "YES, sleep in tomorrow. Sweet." Ah, but then Monday comes....

Yes, I'm still on vacation but a little voice in the back of my head is saying "only 6 more days till you have to go back to work." I try to quiet it by doing other things, but it keeps coming back. As you can imagine, by the end of the week I'm a basket case. Hmmm, maybe I should just look for a new job, but that takes too much effort and I'm lazy.

You may think that if I went somewhere on vacation it would take my mind off it, but that only makes it worse. Why? Because not only do I have to stress about going back to work, now I have the added stress of going back home.

Look, I may be weird, but I'm not crazy I still go on vacations and I'm usually sucessful at drowning out the voice (usually with the help of alcohol) but it's always there.

On a related note, you know those lotto fantasies that people have? Yeah I have those too, but my fantasy starts with me winning lotto then goes on to me worrying about how much the IRS will take and if my husband decides to leave me, how much will he get? See, it's my damn brain messing things up for me again.

Have fun on your next vacation and spare a thought for me. I'll be the one huddled over a piece of paper counting how many hours I have left. That's what I learned today.