How much doing nothing is enough?

Just got back from a convention in New Orleans; the long weekend was not nearly long enough. I spent a couple of days at the convention, then a couple of days doodling around the French Quarter. It wasn't until the morning of the day we left that I really felt calm-ish. Looking for a bit of breakfast before our cemetery tour (details and photos to follow), we found a little sunlit cafe with fantastic breakfast biscuits and a wonderful cafe au lait. I sat in the sun indoors and sipped my coffee (spring in NOLA is reportedly the best time to visit, though I was a little chilly the whole weekend despite temps being in the high 70s). I realized that we'd (Guy and I) spent the last two days just wandering and looking, not having too much of a timetable, and it had been good. Would that the entire weekend had been that way--no convention involved (for me anyway), just wandering around and seeing what there was to see.

Guy commented that he felt we'd spent about the right amount of time on vacation--he hadn't done a lot, and this was just the right amount of do-nothing time. Frankly, I could have spent five days just wandering from shop to bookstore to cafe without batting and eye or getting bored. Guy, however, wants to go see and do stuff. Compare that to home, though: I'm constantly in motion, going and doing and cleaning and fixing and writing and tweaking stuff, and Guy watches sports and surfs the web and generally chills out. So, of course Guy's bored and I'm overstimulated when it comes to vacay activities. (Camping trips tend to be our best chance at balancing activities and rest/nothing time, and we do have a long trip to Yellowstone planned for the end of the summer.)

When I lamented about wanting more downtime, Guy commented "Well, you can do nothing at home for a lot cheaper." I shot back, "You can do nothing at home for cheaper; when I'm home, there's always something to clean or write or check or do." Upon mulling this over more, the obvious (and mildly-oversimplified) answer to the predicament is to get Guy to help me around the house more and spend more time chilling out at home. But would I even really rest if I had more free time, or would I fill it with yet more things to do? (e.g., now that Guy's swiffing the house, that gives me time to clean out the junk drawer!)

Either way, I hit the ground running with my hair on fire when I got back to work this week. We have a lot to do before our user group meetings next week, so looks like at least one day of my weekend will be spent doing something at work as opposed to something (or nothing) at home. At least kittehs were happy to see us when we got home.