When your spouse or significant other sees you sitting on the front steps, staring into space, it is only natural for him or her to believe that you are loafing. Most people do not realize that much of the writing process goes on silently, inside the mind, before your fingers ever touch a keyboard. It is a good idea to explain this to those you live with, in order not to feel guilty every time you take a few minutes to think about your writing. This could be an entry in your journal or diary, some personal correspondence, or a poem. After not writing for more than a couple of days, it is hard to get the literary engine warmed up again.
Vacations are a good example.
This is supposed to be a time when you leave your work behind and do nothing but relax, and that works fine if you are leaving behind a regular job. A guitarist for example, would probably not leave his or her instrument behind when going to the mountains, and a painter would probably take at least a sketchpad along when vacationing at the coast. Writers are no different. That is why you should always carry some kind of note pad, a supply of index cards, or a micro-cassette recorder in order to write down or record interesting ideas, scenes and descriptions. In many cases these random scribblings or recordings are never used.