For the past 14 years, Amanda and I have gone on a trip over New Years. We call them “relaxications,” because they’re distinctly not vacations. On a vacation, you create an itinerary, make dinner reservations, and maximize each and every day for fun, cherished memories. And Instagram likes. After all, can a vacation even be “fun” if strangers online aren’t commenting on everything you see and eat? The answer, of course, is no.
A relaxication is when we leave town for a few days to do nothing but sleep in, watch dumb movies, take a swim, read a book, and whatever the heart desires in that moment. As long as it’s decidedly chill. No waiting in a long and stressful two hour queue with screaming babies and screaming parents to hop onto a seven minute “screamin’” roller coaster. On a relaxication, you must relaxicate.
The arch enemy of relaxication is work. We began the tradition because we ran our own business for eight years. Our small publishing house was constant work for us. A never-ending flow of deadlines, book balancing, and emails. Dear lord, the emails. When you’re your own boss, it’s difficult to step away from the work. Who will do the thing that desperately needs to get done? You know, the thing that’ll end the whole business if you don’t do it right this second? So we try our very best to stay off our phones and quiet all notifications during relaxication, to avoid the chirpy song of the email sirens, beckoning us with the seductive allure of Inbox Zero.
It’s been many years since we sunsetted our publishing operations, but Amanda and I still go on yearly relaxications. Only this year in Ojai, there would be… a very non-relaxing problem! (Gasp!) Amanda was tapped out on PTO at her current gig, due to us taking two long vay-cations during the year. They were very fun, but definitely not relaxing. One was kind of a work-cation, because I gave a presentation at Narrascope and the lead-up to it was very stressful.
Amanda’s office doesn’t shut down the week between Christmas and New Years. So she would be on-call during relaxication and would have to… gasp… write emails in the hotel. By the way, here’s a hill I’ll die on: All offices that can shut down between Christmas and New Years should shut down between Christmas and New Years. Sure, emergency hotlines have to stay open in case we drink poison eggnog or something. But I would wager that at the vast majority of offices, nothing gets done during that week. Keeping the office technically open is just a shifty way to gobble up employee PTO, because who wants to be sitting at their desk in a dead quiet office wishing they could be cozy by the fire with their beloved? (Their beloved being the Switch 2.)
At first, I panicked, but you don’t want to go into relaxication in a panic. Panicking is the least relaxing thing you can do! I decided I would valiantly help her by doing what I call “sympathy work.” If Amanda was being forced by the cruel mistress of capitalism to write emails, I would also type something into my laptop, too, so she wouldn’t feel bad about not reading or swimming with me.
But what to type? I cleared my indie project slate a month ago. There was only one project I was anticipating to begin 2024 with: a hotel management simulator based on The Cocoanuts, the Marx Bros. first movie, for the public domain jam. The jam would start on January 1st, which was still a few days away when relaxication began. It’s improper jam etiquette to begin a jam before the starting date.
So I figured out a workaround. I wouldn’t work on Hotel de Cocoanut on relaxication. I’d start writing a game called Wacky Hotel, which just so happened to be a hotel management simulator. If I decided later to reskin my entirely unrelated game Wacky Hotel as Hotel de Cocoanut, the reskin effort would be for the jam.
“Hey Geoffrey! What’s with all the rule-breaking? No work on relaxication. No working on a jam before the start date. You some kind of lawless anarchist or something? Also, who am I supposed to be asking this question? Am I the a reader? Your inner-voice? A g-g-ghost?”
Thanks for the question, who/whatever you are. I’m just trying to go with the flow this year. Do what feels right in the moment. I’d rather my partner feel supported than abide by rules we made up for ourselves over a decade ago. I’d rather be a little cheeky with the rules of a game jam I’m doing for fun, than pantomime writing on my laptop. Also, you know who wouldn’t care about breaking rules and social taboos? The Marx Brothers! At no point does Harpo debate with himself about whether or not it’s right to eat a phone. He eats a phone because that’s what works for Harpo in the moment. Also, the hotel had, what, a chocolate phone? I’m glad Harpo ate it before it melted in the Florida heat. Hero!
Amanda and I had fun on relaxication this year. We watched the bonkers 80s sexploitation comedy Hollywood Hot Tubs. We went to a honey tasting and learned that honey tastes radically different depending on which flowers the bees are pollinating. (The stuff we get in supermarkets is a mixture of honey from many different farms put together to get the color consumers prefer with little regard for taste.) I came away from the trip with a working, though rudimentary proof-of-concept prototype for Wacky Hotel, made in Ink.
The biggest hamper on our good times wasn’t email, but illness. Both of us struggled with lingering Christmas Coughs. (“Ho Ho Hyaaak!”) Amanda’s cough got pretty bad, but I was there to fetch water, tea, and medicine, and scratch her back. I made a promise, “in sickness and in health.” That’s one rule I’ll never break.
🎲 Your Turn: Have you ever broken the rules? Either rules you set for yourself or ones set by The Man? Reply to this email to tell me about your lawlessness, or tell the whole world by hitting the orange button below. And keep it light. No murder confessions, please!
Leave a Reply