Vacations are like rough drafts

Okay, go with me on this for a minute. Due to a family wide case of the major-bad flu (excepting me for now), mountains of laundry threatening to bury my bedroom and everything in it, and needing to banish my new friends that came home from Florida with me (4 lbs courtesy of Disney World meal plan), my brain is sort of on the fritz. However, I will still try to have this make sense. Wish me luck.

Going on vacation is like writing a first draft of a novel. You have freedom! You can have fun to your heart's content! You get to go anywhere, and do anything you want! Vacation is a break from the day-to-day blah-ness of life; it's a blissful state of ditching reality and living in pursuit of happiness with no restrictions from work and other stuff like that. (I know, this is one eloquent post, right? ha ha)

Coming home is like going back to that rough draft to start editing. Suddenly there are rules governing your life - bedtimes, naptimes, mealtimes, bills, budgets, work and school and cleaning. These "rules" must be adhered to or else everything falls apart at the seams. You have to organize the mess that inevitably follows a vacation back into order. Or, in my case, at least try to organize it.

So, when you're writing that rough draft, don't let yourself get bogged down by all the rules and constrictions of editing and revising. Just get the story out. Finish it. Write. The. Whole. Thing. Enjoy the pure power of creativity that flows when you're letting those words flow from your mind to your fingers, through the keys, and onto the screen.

Then come back and clean up your mess later.

Did that make sense? Well, hopefully it did, at least a little bit. I better run, my laundry seems to be flowing out of the room and threatening to bury my sick children and husband, too. Can clothes multiply spontaneously?