Dreaming of paid time off and learning holidays in the sun

Damn Gary Quinn and his surf board toting article in the Irish Times. Is he paid by the Irish Times to take such a holiday, or is he sponsored by eurolanguages.com, both of whom benefit from his Spanish in the surf? What a perfect job, and why don't I have it? His magical tale wraps itself around my brain, like a boa constrictor, threatening to squish my happiness and delusion in my own day to day life. A week in Spain eating glorious Spanish food, taking afternoon siestas, and lapping up the lessons in the surf, while learning a language sounds utterly sublime as I sit mired in to-do lists that never seem to get any shorter. The break sounds utterly delicious, and I am wracking my brains trying to figure out how I can build a business that will enable me to take the time off and indeed pay for such an adventure... today.

I check out the website recommended, and torture myself looking at French packages with cooking lessons attached. "The reviews are all so positive," I notice, "and they are so cheap, especially considering what you are gaining."

Clicking on a link where I am shown the registration fee that wasn't included in the original price, I hear the voice in my head wavering a little, "Even if they do add on a whopping registration fee, and aren't including the cost of food or accommodation... these things will sort themselves out..."

Who am I kidding? Deluded I must be as I have neglected to remember that I am bordering on a vegan and I can't think of anything worse than seeing all that cream, cheese and butter not to mention meat, being used in French delicacies that I can't sample. Obviously the article has found a part of my brain that has no logic, and imbedded itself so deeply that reality has gone out the window.

What happened to my idea of living in the now, in the moment, not needing to buy things or be a "consumer".

I resigned from my job a couple of weeks ago, convinced that the business idea that we had, www.meetforeal.com, was strong enough, is strong enough, to create jobs for both myself and my partner. Although I still believe this to be true, it sometimes breaks my heart to see how long the road is ahead, and how tough it's going to be to get through the Seth Godin "Dip" and into the land of "scarcity creating value", when our events will effortlessly pull in both the sponsors and the punters. I know that day exists, but how far away it is I cannot measure, and until I can see it in my sights, its saliva drooling, logic out the window dreaming for me, and a matter of postponing all those learning holidays in the sun until a future date... Just another to-do list for me to monitor.