Our family is headed off on a mini vacation to Massachusetts this weekend. It’s primarily a family reunion, but it’s also an excuse for a brief but much-needed change of scene.
I don’t bring my laptop on vacation anymore. The temptation to check on work is too strong, and I’m getting too lazy to bring anything that won’t fit in a suitcase and my purse. I do need to write, however, and when my boss gave us all iPads a couple of years ago, I decided it was the perfect vacation writing tool. It’s turned out to be a lot more.
Sometimes I’ll take a drawing pad and pencils, but because scanning sketches for posts is a bit of a pain, last summer I experimented with drawing right on the iPad. The sketches from the iPad were simple scrawls at best. It was a lot like finger painting, and I wasn’t always happy with the results. I was happy, however, with the experience. Forced not to work but to create and to do so outside of my comfort zone, I started trying new things that never would have occurred to me if there had been a convenient way to scan sketches into posts.
Tomorrow I’m leaving work and my current favorite tool (colored pencils) at home. We have three days. I can spend that time carrying and organizing my working and writing tools, or I can spend those days living – even if it means traveling a less familiar path. The sketches will be scrawls for a few days, but I think they’ll have their own rewards.