Where has the relaxation gone?

Pardon this "rant" -- something that has been bothering me for a couple of days and needed to vent it in an informal way...

Take it easy, take it easy
Don't let the sound of your own wheels
drive you crazy
Lighten up while you still can
Don't even try to understand
Just find a place to make your stand,
and take it easy
“Take it Easy,” by the Eagles

Where has the relaxation gone?

It feels like it has been forever since the wife and I got a “quiet” weekend. With March already booked, we jumped at the opportunity for a weekend away in Ashtabula County this past weekend.

And all looked great, until Friday afternoon. We got a last minute call inviting us to dinner with a couple of dear friends. We both knew what we had to do – and wanted to do – though we didn’t want to admit it at the time. So we cancelled the Jacuzzi room and altered our plans to make it back to Tiffin in time for dinner on Saturday.

It was the right thing to do. The events of Saturday and Sunday proved that to me.

But still, during that trip when the miles were blowing past the Blazer’s tires faster than an American Idol winner’s fifteen minutes of fame, I wanted to be selfish. I wanted to be greedy. I wanted a quiet weekend without the hustle and bustle of running from site to site.

After the selfishness bled out, I began to wonder what has happened to our society that has created a “drive” that forces us to run-run-run during the week, but then when the weekend comes we try to pack everything we’ve missed from the previous week into 48 hours.

It is the drive that has me sitting here as the midnight our approaches trying to update this Web blog and staring at a “to do” list 15 items long that I want to have finished before heading on another trip this weekend.

The relaxation will come...right?