Me on vacation.

Recreating?  Re-creating?

I don't think of myself as a vacation person.  But my family loves them some vacations and particularly loves Kauai.  Julia thinks of The Point at Poipu as one of her houses.  She has been visiting there since she was born.

So here I am one week into a two week vacation in Hawaii.  I brought my laptop with me, and not just so I could book ATV tours.  I read my work email.  I answer some.  Is this a vacation?  Is this the break from work that I read you "need" so you come back re-charged?  Re-vivified?  De-zombieized?

You know what?  I think it is.  What I am NOT doing is anything I don't feel like doing.  Yes, I'd like to send my app to the VP at work who asked for it.  But reading his email, it seems pretty clear he thinks it is something else (something I CAN create).  So I am somewhat paralyzed, do I do what he asked, send him the app I wrote about, regardless of my concern that he thinks it is something else?  Do I write the new app, knowing full well that "it is a few days work" is B.S., for me anyway it is a minimum of 2 weeks work?

I'm on vacation.  What I do is read randomly through the web.  I have been wonderful places on the web in the last few days.  A wonderful blog by a VC in New York City.  (Ignore his vacation stuff, its too vacationy.)  He leads me to Seth Grodin, eh.  But he leads me to kickstarter where I get a much better/different idea about the relative importances of smartphones, android, iphone, and... Sensors!  Sensors!  (I had to say that twice because there were two links I wanted to share.  Try them both! (new start-up idea... hyperlinks that bring you to two web pages instead of just one.)).

And how did I find that VC?  Oh yeah, one of the best essayists in the universe, Paul Graham wrote about him.  And Paul was giving me leads on how to approach my work more effectively.  And Seth was warning against pandering.  So I don't have to be too responsive to a VP's request, I should at least consider doing something he might really be interested in, on my schedule not his.

And I can follow Paul's advice to put these at the top of my To Do list:

• Don't ignore your dreams; 
• don't work too much; 
• say what you think; 
• cultivate friendships; be happy.

That looks like re-creation worty of a vacation to me.