Once in a while I read an article that rings SO TRUE I feel I have to share it with everyone.  The excerpts below validate my lifelong impressions about “vacations” — conflicting emotions which, in the past,  often left me feeling guilty:

” . . . how long we take off [for a vacation] counts for less than we think, and taking more short trips leaves us happier than taking a few long ones. We’re often happier planning a trip than actually taking it.  And interrupting a vacation — far from being a nuisance — can make us enjoy it more. How a trip ends matters more than how it begins, who you’re with matters as much as where you go, and if you want to remember a vacation vividly, do something during it that you’ve never done before. And though it may feel unnecessary, it’s important to force yourself to actually take the time off in the first place — people, it turns out, are as prone to procrastinate when it comes to pleasurable things like vacations as unpleasant ones like paperwork and visits to the dentist.”

Apparently, experts in ’Hedonic Psychology’ – essentially the science of  ‘human pleasure’ – feel our perceptions of what it means to vacation reflect the way we absorb many life experiences (perhaps even our childhoods).

For example, the results of a Northwestern Univ study “asked people on three different types of vacations to fill out a series of emotional inventories before the vacation, during it, and then after. They found that in all three cases, the respondents were least happy about the vacation while they were taking it. Beforehand, they looked forward to it with eager anticipation, and within a few days of returning, they remembered it fondly. But while on it, they found themselves bogged down by the disappointments and logistical headaches of actually going somewhere and doing something, the pressure they felt to be enjoying themselves.”

And finally, “part of why we enjoy a vacation stems from the fact that it gives us a deadline: an often sharply limited time window during which we have to go out and enjoy ourselves. If you realize this, you can give yourself some of the benefits of a vacation without going anywhere, simply by cordoning off a day or two and strictly scheduling it for leisure.”

I couldn’t agree more with all the findings…. anyone disagree?

(*excepted from The Week Magazine (“The Perfect Vacation”) 7/16/10 - originally written in full by Drake Bennett in The Boston Globe)