Vacation

That long silence wasn't just me being lazy, it was me being lazy in a pre-planned manner.  In other words, vacation!

It's not very Stoical to take a vacation.  Epictetus writes:

But you take a journey to Olympia to see the work of Phidias, and all of you think it is a misfortune to die without having seen such things.  But when there is no need to take a journey, and where a man is, there he has the works before him, will you not desire to see and understand them?  Will you not perceive either what you are, and what you were born for, or what this is for which you have received the faculty of sight?  But you may say, there are some things disagreeable and troublesome in life.  And are there none at Olympia?  Are you not scorched?  Are you not pressed by a crowd?  Are you not without comfortable means of bathing?  Are you not wet when it rains?  Have you not abundance of noise, clamor, and other disagreeable things?  But I suppose that setting all the things off against the magnificence of the spectacle, you bear and endure.

On the other hand, research into happiness shows that vacations are rated as happy times by those recalling them, even if at the time they were experienced they were no happier than normal (maybe even less).

To take a vacation is to leave our normal routine, and if only for that, it is valuable, for in leaving our routine we can examine it from afar, and thus change it.  In Stoic theory, vacations may not be necessary, but we're never as perfect as the Stoics would hope we are.  They remain worthwhile, and that's not a bad thing.