The Tryptophan Comedown

How do you people do it? How do you go back to work after five days off? I own my own business and am not acquainted with things such as paid time off and vacation days or calling in sick to the boss on that first day you’re supposed to be back at work from vacation. In fact, I usually take only a handful of days off every year. But I’ve been off since last Wednesday for the Thanksgiving holiday and I’m not sure I can go back to my normal life now. Not only is the thought of going back to work for another stretch of six-days-per-week work weeks grueling, but I’m also feeling strangely melancholy after the holiday, as though I’ve left something important behind and may not be able to get it back. I know that depression is normal after holidays, and this could be a bit of that. I just hope it goes away soon. We had a wonderful time with family, but we’ll see them again, and there is still more of the holiday season to come. We went to a friend’s house for brunch today and wound up spending the entire day there talking, eating and playing games, so it was as though we eased out of our vacation, which was nice, and back into the icy-cold water of reality. I learned four things about our friends today: 1) The Admiral makes perfect pancakes, 2) S.A.M. has enough trivia in her head to choke a Mastiff, 3) even if someone lives a block from a restaurant, she’ll still drive to pick up the take-out, and most of that drive will be spent trying to parallel park between a large empty space and nothing at all, and 4) an audio engineering professor’s house is oddly devoid of any music on the hi-fi.

There is about a month of the Christmas holidays to come and my goal is to enjoy them and the time with The Quartet. Being in retail, this month is usually all about numbers and worrying that they’re not right (they never are), and I’m tired of that. I’ve been doing this for eight years and I feel that I’ve missed out on a lot at home and with family and friends during the holidays, and it really needs to be the other way around. So this year I resolve to face the season head on with decorating, visits to Santa, baking, dreaming with the kids and celebrating with friends.