Post Holiday Blues

So it is we return from our Christmas holidays having jetted home to see our friends and families and have them fill us with food and wine all week, followed by the annual snow trip. Going from -10 degree, white Japan to +30 degree Bangkok streets has it's down side and we find ourselves wading through the post holiday blues. These blues at first seem different, but this morning standing on the train as Radiohead plays in my ears I realise they are the same. Maybe it was Radiohead, maybe it wasn't the fact my holiday was over and I was going to work?

I thought of the many post holiday downers I have had and like all things it's just a matter of perspective. At least we can head off on a plane, experience new and different things and see our friends and families when we choose to.

Now not to be too philosophical about holidays, but it is easy for us to return to work and begrudge the effort we need to take to be able to catch the next plane. It's all too easy to walk in to the boss, slam the desk and tell him to shove his job with visions of tropical islands or mountain retreats plastered in our minds. But then just before you catch the lift to the top floor, you realise how hard it will be to fund that next plane ride out of here by simply laying on your ass drinking cocktails (you have even done some strange math but can’t make it work). Reality sets in and your shoulders slump and the blue surrounds you, not even a decent coffee can shake it. Maybe some vodka can?

So before we take to the bottom drawer where we keep the white spirits, before we make the day even longer than it needs to be, before we overdoes on caffeine, we need to step back or around our mood and realise that we have choices. We are lucky to be able to choose to work or not (and enjoy the trappings it brings or not), we are lucky to know that if we so choose to we can leave it at any time and go do something else. Many can't..

It's whether we do anything with those choices or not which is really the cause of our blues. And really, being one of the lucky ones who has a choice is nothing to be down about, it's a sad fact then that I could be feeling blue because my holiday was over and I had to return to work. But being human means I am prone to wanting something I haven't got or wanting everything with no sacrifice.

When I distil it down, I realise I am blue because I know I have choices and I can act on them whenever I want. I'm blue because I feel I am stuck, stuck between wanting to be on holiday all the time and knowing that I need to sacrifice by working to be able to go.

Now some people, most people I'm guessing already know that, and I do too. But it's strange how we seem to get stuck in our blue moods post holidays when we know this even before we check in for that flight, even before we book the tickets. So why do we do it? Why do we allow ourselves to be down?

Simple, it prolongs the holiday....We lament having to return, there isn’t a day spa in sight, we can still taste that last martini at the bar, we are still rocketing down the mountain! But we know we aren't and so we turn to our calendars and mark up all the coming public holidays and scheme ways of taking more leave than we have and dream up holidays and adventures away from our desks. And for a while the blue is gone, evaporated into the postcards you will write (sorry blogs and face book posts), places you will go and food you will eat.

But once the time comes to book that next trip and you realise that you have only been back at work 2 days, you come back to earth. You mark the booking site as a favourite, close the internet and go back to work. But that is part of the choice, the choice to sacrifice, to take that next plane.

I know I have choices, I have made mine. My calendar is marked, I use different colours so I know how far away the next long weekend is, my favourite web sites are marked for easy access and my bag is half packed already. The blues may be here, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let this holiday end so soon!