Life's a Beach, Then You Dive (Sort Of)

Stream of Consciousness alert:

Tonight, I almost lost my marbles listening to a bunch of people in the lab go off about their upcoming vacations next month.

"Yeah, I'm so glad to finally be able to take a week off to see Crater Lake next month."
"No way, I've got a few days to camp out at Okanogan."
"Blah, blah, ad infinitum."

All their vacation fetishes sound so utterly futile.  My friends at work tend to forego the thought of a more valid idea that their vacations would end the way it began; work.  Here's the thing, you burnout and then you recharge.  Then you'll burn out again, only to find yourself recharging.  It's so depressing, see?  Why blabber on like it's the greatest thing that's happened ever?  They need to recognize PTO as a form of human right to which their entitlement should not be one of rarity.  I'm happy to see them delighted at the upcoming wisp of bright light from their penumbra of pragmatic discontents, but that shouldn't be their raison d'être - which I'm sure it isn't, but here it's sounding like it.

Re: All the things our teachers taught us are things that their teachers taught them.  We are designed to perpetuate a trajectory toward some vague notion of progress we lack the sophistication to understand yet are totally committed to, but secretly hate, and compensate for behind the pretense of vacations.  Higher dimensions of control tell us what we want and we dutifully obey.

For the record, I'm not anti-vacation/work.  What I am against is the way we've adopted the idea that vacations are a privilege.  That the need to seek new places and enrich lives require a ritualistic blood sacrifice of who we are and a total surrender of the things we truly value and love.