These past six weeks have been incredible for yours truly, featuring three trips of substantial length for three very different experiences: one the largest American summer concert festival, another a trip to the western shores of Lake Michigan for a Fourth of July celebration with friends both old and new in and around Milwaukee, and then a trip with my older brother back home to Ohio to help my parents clean the piling, dusty remnants of our (and our sister’s) childhood from the catacombs of a basement rarely visited by anyone now that all the kids are gone.

All three trips fulfilled in different ways, satisfied different aspects of my spirit, and broke up routine by reminding me that this is a great life I’ve had thus far, and those people and experiences on the trips further enriched it.

But now I’m tired as shit, suffering from a massive serotonin deficiency and frustrated with any sort of day-to-day happening that doesn’t yield a great time involving the drinking of beer or the pleasing of my spirit in some vaguely-existential way.

I became familiar with the term “self-actualization” while up in Milwaukee. The realizing of one’s potential? The fulfillment of one’s ultimate ambitions, becoming everything one is capable of becoming? The final development on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the one that allows for coming to grips with reality and the ultimate denial of Denial?

Sounds great, but it’s tough to contemplate any proximity to such a situation when skulking into work on a cloudy Monday and immediately being disrespected by a complete stranger. Very tough indeed.

On the other hand, such a psychic situation is easy to supposedly revel in when in the middle of a park on a sunny seventy degree day spent throwing a Frisbee and feeling the wind off Lake Michigan while sipping cold beers and enjoying the company of longtime friends you never get to see enough of anymore.

Neither situation lasts, of course. I left the crappy Monday after three hours with fifty bucks in my pocket and a nice relaxing night to look forward to, and every halcyon afternoon spent drinking with buddies is inevitably followed by a fair amount of hours gobbled up by a dull hangover that leaves one sleepy but restless.

People cannot live on vacation anymore than they can vacation while at work. The very idea of vacation exists in direct opposition to work and, furthermore, to reality. Children are about the only beings capable of living their lives in an unending and constant state of innocent play, but even they have to color between the lines and one day learn how to read. No one gets away from responsibility, even something so simple as getting a decent amount of sleep at some point over any prolonged period of time.

The one bonus of being in a nice house watching a brilliant tennis match the morning after having a ridiculously good time on the most American of holidays in a city far from your own is that it puts your daily reality, the one you live when not on vacation, in stark relief. Gives you topographic perspective on things. Helps you see the peaks and the valleys and what, ultimately, could use an upgrade long-term, what could be improved upon, and things that must be put into some order to come back around towards achieving that sought after (now that I know what it is) self-actualization.

This is dangerous, however, also, all the same, and too, because it can lend what you do and what you have done on a day-to-day basis for any number of months or years a searing dissatisfaction that can, if allowed to, shade every action going forward while still immersed within that particular day-to-day reality from which said vacation was taken.

Maybe millionaires get to live on vacation? No, because eventually they have to pay the taxes for the lifestyle. People who love what they do may feel at times as though their lives are constant vacations, but there’s some bitch at work or some dickhead on the corner they routinely cross paths with that rubs them the wrong way. They may not let it get to them, but they can’t be happy all the time.

Can they?

Such a situation seems impossible, hard to maintain and precariously close to catastrophic collapse at any moment, a house of cards falling down and being blown away by that wind off Lake Michigan that only feels so good because humans have enough girth to keep ourselves rooted to the ground when it picks up in intensity and makes its presence known.

The wind only affects our Frisbee’s flight, and even then it can be fun to adjust the path on which you first embarked to catch the flying disc and maybe even dive onto a patch of grass that leaves bug bites along your back that seemingly must be scratched but should not be if you ever want them to stop itching.