I’m sure that everyone reading this understands how life can sometimes just get in the way of life. It’s times like that when slipping away to a warm beach somewhere appeals to me the most. Especially since yesterday I woke up and there was ice on the ground. I hate the cold.

I look out my window and see frost or snow, the heat is on, and i’m still a little cold. Yet when I close my eyes, I can see the sun beating down on the sand. Unfortunately, I just can’t feel it. Maybe I should buy a sun lamp. Yeah, put a sand box in the basement, with a sun lamp and a recording of some waves and seagulls. That sounds good. My own private beach, sort of.

Sorry for the rambleness of this post. It’s hard to keep writing about a place you want to be, but can’t get to. I keep saying I need to do some research for this blog on a beach in the Caribbean, but my wife keeps talking some nonsense about work and a paycheck or something.

Enjoy this picture. It’s where I want to be.

1. The Baths – Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands

Snorkeling, caves, grotto’s and beautiful sandy beaches are what you can expect at The Baths in BVI. The giant boulders have created a type of maze to walk through.

2. Flamenco Beach – Culebra Island, Puerto Rico

Tropical forests, beaches, nature, turtles. What more could you want from an exotic island. Much of Culebra Island is protected, for wildlife, plants, and historic monuments.

3. Flic en Flac – Mauritius

Flic en Flac is a small village on the West Coast of Mauritius. Of course, it has the required white sand beaches, and it also has a blue lagoon.

4. Copacabana – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Before you start trying to sing some Barry Manilow, this isn’t the nightclub, but the beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This is the opposite of a quiet village, and is one of the party capitals of the world.

5. Playa Tamarindo – Costa Rica

If you want to get away, go to Playa Tamarindo Costa Rica. The jungle looks like it comes right up to the beach. The sea turtles love it so much, they come back every year to make more sea turtles.

Come back for the next five exotic beaches on the list.

I found this at OpenSwitch.org, where the the writer points out that the US is on the very end with absolutely no mandatory vacation or holidays. He thinks this is good. I agree with him. The government to step in and tell businesses that they have to give paid holidays is fascism. I know what fascism is, because I’ve been watching Glenn Beck. I don’t live in a fascist state, I live in a democracy (although there are many that would argue, but by the mere fact that they are allowed to argue, prove themselves wrong).

Don’t get me wrong, I would love to have 4 weeks paid vacation no matter where I worked. But to me, a vacation that is earned, is much better than a vacation that is given. Although I would still take a vacation if it was given to me.

Sorry if that was a little too political, I really try to stay away from politics.

While other countries guarantee time off from jobs — Finland 39 days a year, Canada 18 and Japan 10 — U.S. law gives workers a right to zero days off, even for holidays.

Several countries, including Switzerland and Australia, have laws forbidding workers from cashing out time off for an extra paycheck or two. The countries require workers to take their time off — partly to protect against pressure from bosses to stay at their posts.

In the absence of any government mandate, about one in four working Americans get no paid vacations or holidays, according to several estimates, including the new report. On average, U.S. workers get nine paid vacation days and six holidays a year, the report said.

I don’t know what to think about this. Well actually I do, I don’t like it. Yeah, I know, the Beach Bum doesn’t like mandatory three weeks paid vacation? No. I don’t. My brother owns the web marketing company Site Logic Marketing. He has one full-time employee. Now being in his first year of business, he really can’t afford to pay someone for three weeks of no work. The driving force behind US small business is the ability of the owner and entrepreneur to make his own rules. When the government steps in and says you have to do this, and do that, the business owner loses control of his own creation.

We, as Americans, have a choice where we work. We have a choice how hard to work. France may have a mandatory five week vacation from a full-time 35 hour work week, but they also had guaranteed employment. You were guaranteed to a job, and not allowed to be fired for at least two years. Now that just tells new employees to be lazy. You’re given a job, you can’t be fired, and you get paid vacation. Where’s the incentive to work? I love vacations and the beach as much as the next guy (maybe more), but to earn that vacation is more rewarding than the government giving it to me.

What does Noah Webster say;

Main Entry: ¹va·ca·tion
Pronunciation: vA-'kA-sh&n, v&-
Function: noun
Usage: often attributive
Etymology: Middle English vacacioun, from Anglo-French vacacion, from Latin vacation-, vacatio freedom, exemption, from vacare
1 : a respite or a time of respite from something : INTERMISSION
2 a : a scheduled period during which activity (as of a court or school) is suspended b : a period of exemption from work granted to an employee
3 : a period spent away from home or business in travel or recreation <had a restful vacation at the beach>
4 : an act or an instance of vacating

Latin vacatio – FREEDOM. From home or business. So theoretically you could have a vacation at home from work. But that’s theoretically, and we’re not philosophy majors. This is reality. Reality is leaving work and home, and going somewhere you can relax and get away from just about everything that you can.

OK. Enough preaching. That’s my dad’s job. Speaking of my dad, he and my mom went to Newport, Rhode Island last week for my cousins graduation. They didn’t even go to the beach! Now I know that the water might have been a little cool, but still. They were right there! They did, however, go eat at Flo’s Clam Shack in Middletown, and took their food across the street to 1st Beach (Easton’s Beach).

What is a beach bum? Is it type 1, someone who is really just homeless and living on the beach? Is it type 2, someone who takes extended vacations on the beach? Or is it type 3, someone who works and lives on the beach?

I like to think that being a beach bum is an intentional thing. You love the beach and the ocean so much that you just want to be there all the time. How to do that and still make a living is the hard part. Obviously, some careers are better than others for this.

Being a teacher is fantastic for being a type 2 beach bum. All summer of to go to the beach. However, there isn’t always a lot of money in teaching to be able to stay that long.

Professional surfers would be type 3 beach bums. What a life. I still need to learn to surf. I think that eventually I will be a type 3. I work in a business where I can work from home, the office, the back porch, Jamaica, basically anywhere there’s a connection (preferably wireless) I can work. That’s great. I love it.

I don’t think that you have to really live at the beach to be a beach bum (although it certainly helps). You can live the lifestyle anywhere, you just can’t be a professional. Anybody can be an amateur beach bum.

How to be a Beach Bum.

But what do you do if you can’t be type 2 or 3. You obviously don’t want to be type 1. I read an article one time that said when you take off of work (sickness, personal day, anything) ask about maybe getting remote access. Then work. Work from home that day. Show you can do it. Start doing it little by little. The more you can work from home, and the better job you do, the more your boss or bosses or management will let you work from home. From there, it’s just a step away from the beach.

Start listening to Jimmy Buffett. If you don’t like Jimmy, listen to Bob Marley. It doesn’t really matter who you listen to, but what you listen to. If you like it, and it reminds you of where you really want to be, listen to it. Maybe you want to be in Ireland, then listen to Irish music, or songs about Ireland. If you want to go to Italy, then do the same thing.

Get into the whole idea and feel of where you want to be. Cook that style of food. I love Jamaican Jerk. I want to be in Jamaica. So I make a lot of jerk chicken, jerk pork, just about anything I can jerk I will. I even put jerk seasoning in tuna. Taste and smell are the strongest senses tied to memory. It will take you there. Even if you’re not there physically, you’ll be enjoying the lifestyle.

Why be a Beach Bum?

Why not? Hear the waves rushing into shore. The smell the salt air. The seagulls overhead (watch out for the poo). The warmth of the sun and the sand. Oh man, why not be a beach bum.

Futurists in the 1970s predicted that, by now, technology would have so shrunk our workloads that we’d all be paddling about in a leisure-and-vacation playland. How wrong they were.

“Vacation season is upon us, and a new survey by employment firm Hudson says more than half of American workers fail to take all their vacation days,” BusinessWeek (May 21) reports. “Thirty percent say they use less than half their allotted time. And 20 percent take only a few days instead of a week or two.”

Among so-called extreme jobholders — what author Sylvia Ann Hewlett calls the professional class upper crust — 42 percent claim they have to cancel vacation plans “regularly.” Americans take even less vacation than the Japanese, the people who gave rise to karoshi — the phenomenon of being worked to death. The always-available executive is dangerous, BusinessWeek says. That kind of chief executive “subtly undermines” employees by telegraphing that they are “incapable of running things on their own.”

Personally, I believe that a lot of this is holdover from the yuppie movement of the eighties. As I was watching Wall Street the other night, I thought how crazy that was to want to work 80 to 100 hours a week. I realize that these people were, and are, making more money than I’ll ever see, but is that really the point? What’s the point of having all that money if you never have time to enjoy it? When one third of workers get less than one weeks vacation, and twenty percent of people plan only long weekends instead of a proper vacation, I think somethings wrong. And there is no such thing as a working vacation, it’s one or the other, not both. I want to be comfortable financially, I want to retire and travel, but I also want to have vacation time (while I’m young enough to enjoy it).

I’m still waiting for my robot.

I wanted to share some thoughts on vacations. I’ve seen a lot of people who are going on vacation who think that they have to get everything in that they can. They have to see this place, they have to eat here, don’t forget to check this out. Now I love to see things, and find out about the history, ad of course eat good local food, but that can really tire you out. What’s the point of going on vacation if you never relax. Some people like to keep busy, and more power to them, but I think that many of those people just have never learned to relax, and just enjoy time. I have a trip I’m planning to Negril, Jamaica over at Yahoo! Travel, and there is not much planned on it. I don’t want to be rushing around to keep a schedule. I want to wake up early, go to bed late, and enjoy the beach, and the Jamaican lifestyle as much as I can. Obviously, I don’t have kids. But my parents did. I was there, I know. We didn’t do a lot on vacation, but then we went to Newport, Rhode Island to see family, so we kids had other kids. The point was not to go see everything Newport has to offer, although it has a lot, but to get to the beach, and enjoy the time we had together. That is a vacation. Not to say that I don’t want to do anything in Jamaica, I just don’t want a schedule to take up all my time.