I don’t suspect it’s a surprise that along with the rest of the real estate market, sales of vacation homes have been red hot over the last year. I mean with travel severely curtailed and many vacation destinations closed, having a dedicated vacation property feels like it would be a good idea, even if not exactly a good value. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t periodically trolled real estate sites looking at properties from beachfront to high desert during the plague year(s).

I like the overall idea of having a vacation property, but in the details is where the dream starts to break down. I mean I don’t like cleaning the house I have now. I do it regularly, but I begrudge every hour spent on the task. A house hours away that also needs to be cleaned and maintained feels like it would sap a lot of the restful and restorative effects of having it in the first place. Plus, once upon a time I carried three separate mortgages. In the last two years I’ve gotten very comfortable having worked that down to just having one note to service. Doubling the number of monthly mortgage payments along with all the other ancillary bills like electricity and internet, also feels distinctly non-relaxing.

Despite occasionally looking, I’ve more or less decided against the idea of vacation property for the foreseeable future. I could say it’s a money thing and leave it at that. Everyone would likely understand that logic, but that’s not the biggest hurdle in my mind. It’s the sheer painful logistics of quick trips that makes the idea a likely hard pass for me. There’s finding trusted agents to tend a cat and tortoise while I’m away. Then there’s loading the dogs and their half-truckload of basic maintenance equipment, getting them settled into a different place, and shortly thereafter reloading everything to drive back home. I don’t travel light and consequently, neither do the dogs. Maybe that’s some kind of moral failing, but it’s reality.

As much as I’d like to blow out of work on a random Friday afternoon and lay my head down somewhere in proximity to beaches or mountains, organizing all the moving parts sounds like perfect agony – and feels like something that would suck up every ounce of joy I managed to find in having a second establishment. It’s something to consider, perhaps, when I’ve finished whoring out my brain for 40 hours of each week and there are big buckets of free time, but here and now, the time just isn’t right.