Vacation Anxiety

I need to get a new ID photo.  Currently my photo shows me with blonde, bleached hair.  How many times people have commented on my different looks, I can’t count.  Also, a number of people have found it funny, as I do myself, that I have referred to my trip as a vacation.  I don’t have a job to be vacating from.  Still, it’s a vacation, damnit, and I got some serious vacation anxiety near the end.

What is vacation anxiety?  It should be obvious.  Don’t make me explain.  I wanted to be home, in my own bed, and not feel like I should be out doing stuff all the time hurting my poor little feetsies.  Of course I’m ever so glad that I overcame my vacation anxiety as much as I could and still checked out the Blackhawks at their home rink and the Art Institute of Chicago’s museum, with a special exhibit on Picasso.  But I’m glad not to deal with travel and vacation anymore.

There’s another kind of funny bit of vacation anxiety that I experienced.  Since I was so close to returning home I started feeling as if I only had to survive a few more days in safety.  I had been away from home as a tourist for so long that I thought it would be hilarious, in the most tragic sense, if in the last few days of my trip I were hijacked.  I suddenly had a great fear that my computer, my little moleskin notebook, and my portfolio with some completed work in there from the trip would all be stolen.  What’s funny about this anxiety, though, is that it was almost entirely influenced by my parents.  My parents, as the good parents they are, were always excited for the things I had been doing and seeing but also worried for my safety, mainly when I was in L.A. and Chicago.  Now, I had walked alone in downtown D.C., Boston, and Baltimore, which is by far the sketchiest city I’ve ever been in, and didn’t feel frightened at all.  Suddenly I’m on vacation and I felt terror at the drop of a hat.  So because of that I left the Blackhawks game a little early to preempt my anxiety and that of my parents.

My long, vision quest is now over.  What will come of it?  A lot, actually.  I’ll talk about most of it later, some other time.  For now I will say that I plan on putting together a little collection of all the pieces that I’ve worked on or thought of while on this trip.  Have I already said that in another post?  I don’t know.  I can’t remember.  Whatever.  These vacation-posts really died off after the first one.  Oh well.  Deal with it.