I’m Not a Beach Chair Person

Some people were made for beach chairs. I was not one of them.

I’ve tried. I’ve genuinely, sincerely tried. I’ve sat in the chair. I’ve ordered the drink. I’ve applied the sunscreen and put on the sunglasses and told myself to relax, to just be here, to enjoy this. And within about forty-five minutes I’m fidgeting, people-watching as hard as I possibly can, and quietly wondering if there are any stray cats nearby that I could attempt to befriend.

There are always stray cats at resorts. I have never once successfully befriended one. I keep trying.

The Riviera Maya Incident

The clearest evidence of my fundamental incompatibility with resort life came on a family trip to the Riviera Maya. All-inclusive, beautiful property, the whole vision. My husband and I had grand ideas about exposing our boys to Mexican culture, to something beyond their ordinary lives, to the magic of being somewhere completely different. New foods, new experiences, things you simply cannot get in a small town in rural Missouri.

You can probably see where this is going.

By day two, the boys were in the pool, which sounds promising until you factor in that they were also in a full-throated argument with each other that showed no signs of resolution. When we pointed out that the other guests on their vacation probably hadn’t flown to Mexico to referee a sibling dispute, the boys made a discovery: there was a teen lounge on the complex. With Xbox. Air conditioned. With a snack bar. The younger one found the kids’ lounge. They disappeared into their respective corners of the resort and did not emerge for the remainder of the trip.

They were, by all accounts, completely happy.

My husband and I attempted the beach chair experience in good faith. We sat. We stayed. At some point I became genuinely concerned that my body was leaving a permanent impression in the plastic slats of that chair, that future guests would find a Jen-shaped indentation and wonder what happened here. This is not the kind of mark I want to make on the world.

We were not a good match, me and that resort. The resort was beautiful. The problem was entirely mine.

What I Actually Want

Here’s the thing I’ve had to make peace with: I don’t hate beaches or pools. This post isn’t a manifesto against sand or sunscreen or people who genuinely love a week of horizontal relaxation. Those people are valid. I admire them, actually. There’s something enviable about the ability to truly power down.

The ocean, specifically, is powerful and magical to me. I stand at the edge of it and feel something I can’t entirely name — smallness in a good way, reverence, the particular kind of awe that comes from being near something ancient and indifferent to your presence. A beach sunrise will stop me cold every time. Waves in the dark are one of the most calming things I know.

What I cannot do is stay there all day.

After some honest reflection and the accumulated evidence of several vacations, I have identified the actual problem: I am not anti-beach. I am anti-inactivity. I need to be moving. I need to be looking at things. I need to be eating food from somewhere that required me to find it, talking to someone whose life looks nothing like mine, turning down a street I’ve never been down and seeing what’s there.

And also, and I say this with love — sand finds its way into every single crevice of your existence and stays there for days, and that is simply not something I have made peace with.

What I Am Instead

The trips that have wrecked me in the best possible way share almost nothing with Riviera Maya. They have weather, usually. They require comfortable shoes. They involve me standing somewhere looking at something and feeling, with my whole body, that I am actually here.

Acadia National Park, on the coast of Maine. I stood at the edge of the ocean on a rocky cliff, wind doing whatever it wanted with my hair, and looked out at the Atlantic and thought: this is what I came for. Not a chair. Not a frozen drink. The feeling of being at the edge of something enormous and real.

The Pacific Coast Highway, where the ocean is right there the entire time, and you stop when you want to, and you walk out onto the cliffs, and you don’t have to answer to anyone’s idea of what a vacation should look like.

Ireland in 2009, B&Bs every night, driving roads that barely fit one car, getting slightly lost, talking to strangers, eating at pubs because that’s what you do. No one’s butt molded to anything.

These are the trips I carry around. These are the ones that still give me something when I think about them.

The Actual Point

I think a lot about what it means to know yourself as a traveler, to be honest about what actually lights you up versus what you think you’re supposed to want. Resort vacations are aspirational content. They look incredible in photographs. The before-picture is always someone looking gorgeous and serene in a lounge chair with a cocktail, living her best life.

My best life involves significantly more walking, a higher tolerance for getting slightly turned around, and at least one moment where I’m standing somewhere and thinking: I can’t believe I get to be here.

The solo trip to Amsterdam I’ve booked for September is, among other things, a declaration of this. Not a beach. Not a chair. A canal and a houseboat and a city full of things I’ve never seen and people living their lives in a way I can actually watch up close.

That’s the trip I want. That’s always been the trip I want.

My friend Deb — the one who sent me the Gilda Radner quote that named this whole blog — texted me this morning, apparently on cue: “Yes, do live your life while exploring and experiencing as much as you possibly can. Live large, loud, and with wild abandon.”

I’m choosing to take that as a sign.

The stray cats at the resort are on their own. I have a feeling I’ll find some in Amsterdam.

— Jen