Ah, the thing to remember is that it’s supposed to be fun.
If it’s not, well, maybe there’s something else you were supposed to be doing that day, that fate or Karma or the significant blonde meant you to be doing instead. Fishing or reading or sleeping in, for instance.
Apropos of nothing - where I live it’s vacation world Has been since the railroad came to town. When I was a kid my grandmother rented out a couple of beach houses she had and the people would take them for a month or two or for the summer entirely.
There were fish to catch, paths to walk, berries to pick, books to read. In town, and being charitable, there were maybe five ‘restaurants’ if nobody wanted to cook, and if that was an ongoing thing then they’d go to the various places in a kind of rotation.
But the thing is, people got it. The idea of a vacation, that is. Relax, unwind, don’t push it. Decompress a little.
The problem is that now, it’s different. Let’s say it’s the granddaughter of the people who used to rent my grandmother’s long-gone beach house. And instead of a month or two, she (with her husband’s credit card) has rented a place for a week. At a rental price that I suspect my grandmother would have happily accepted back then if you wanted to buy one of the beach houses.
And as a matter of family lore, she knows what they used to do in their month or so. And she is by gawd going to jam all of that into her week. Everything is laid out, scheduled.
And instead of picking a day that’s pleasant, nope, Tuesday is the day they are going to the beach. “But Mom, it’s raining and blowing, look, the beach chair just blew away”. “I don’t care, it’s Tuesday and we are going to the beach, just like it says on the schedule”.
Heaven help you if you want to, say, go to a movie or something and you’re in line ahead of her. Jennifer, or Karen - and you get where that’s coming from, will be going off about this and that, complaining about every damn thing, as in she has an absolute right to things being just the way she wants them. Her grandmother would have gone with the flow, but not her. Likewise restaurants, likewise getting the groceries.
I’m not surprised that a lot of them wind up vacationing by themselves. The husbands suddenly have work that absolutely needs them back home. I am surprised we don’t have a higher murder rate.
Local folks like me, we hide until Autumn. When it becomes fun again. Surfing in the summer? The waves are blah, everybody and his cousin Louie is ineptly out there on rarely used boards or rentals, smack in the way, and no manners at all. Don’t even get me started on the StUPid.
So- the moral of the story that I have beaten you half to death with: have fun, don’t worry about catching more waves than you do. Enjoy the ones, or the one, you do get. A wave is a wonderfully or terribly transient, impermanent thing, you catch it and you’re there for a few moments and it’s gone with no trace but a swirl of water and a memory., that matters as much or as little as you want it to.
hope that’s of use
doc…