I Still Don't Want to Go on Vacation

Last summer, I wrote this. It didn't happen.

Short of something dramatic, though, we are going on a vacation soon. I'm not looking forward to it. Is something wrong with me?

Here's my thought process.

On the plus side, we're going someplace to which I've never been, and it is a major tourism favorite. If you were to ask me to name the top five places I'd want to visit before I died, this would be one of them.

Now for all of the other stuff.

We're going as part of family thing for my wife's family. As such, our lodging arrangements are set. Due to these arrangements, the highly-touted "vacation sex" is out. I just don't know how it will be possible to get even a little bit of time with a little bit of privacy somewhere in order to even have a quickie. So, NO SEX for over a week. Granted, if we have sex before the trip and after the trip, it will almost be keeping our pace anyway, but at least at home I can masturbate every day that we don't have sex. (Wanna lecture me on how married men shouldn't be doing that? Have at it.)

This also means I'm not going to be getting any alone time to do other things, like reading or all of the other things I find easier to do when I don't have a bunch of noisy people hovering around me.

My routines will be disrupted. This almost always comes with the territory for any vacation, and I understand this should not keep people from taking vacations. Still, I'm a wee bit obsessive-compulsive and I'm a creature of habit, and most of the stuff I don't do while on vacation I will want to do when I get back, so that means I will have a backup of things to do.

Now, many of those things are voluntary, but work isn't. Work piles up. Most of my work will not be done by someone else while I'm on vacation. It will be waiting for me when I get back.

Then there are the costs. I'm currently the sole income earner for my family. We're not destitute, but we have my income flowing into our regular bills, our investments, and our giving. We don't keep much in our basic banking accounts, and I like having an emergency buffer. Tourists often get gouged, and the costs of this trip are depleting our buffer (we didn't have time to plan far enough in advance to budget for this trip).

There are also the usual hassles that come along with taking a vacation, and I've haven't flown since the groping started, so this is going to be an interesting experience. I almost never use public restrooms or those on airplanes, so a long day of traveling is fun. I can hold it just about all day (it’s a gift, or the logical result of paruresis), but as I get older, that's another discomfort.

Our kids are still at the ages during which we have to constantly watch them, especially where there's water around (such as a pool).

In summary, I'm not expecting this vacation to be relaxing for me, but just the opposite. There will be some nice views, but other than that, I will pretty much be doing what I would be doing at home – watching our kids, but it will be costing me a lot more than living at home.

So yes, there are some things wrong with me. But put aside the OCD and paruresis, which never stopped me from taking a vacation before I became a father, and is there something wrong with my thinking about the vacation? Is this normal?