| Quotables |
"Only I wasn't steering anything, not even myself. I just bumped from my hotel to work and to parties and from parties to my hotel and back to work like a numb trolleybus. ... I felt
very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo."
-- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar |
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"On the surface, it sounds irresponsible, but to flourish in a rapidly changing world, you actually need to make more mistakes. Fail quickly. Fail often. If you do something and it
doesn't work, just recover in a hurry and try something else. ... Help develop a culture that is willing to fail its way to the future."
-- Price Pritchett, Culture Shift |
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"There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room. It's like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction -- every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it's really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and that excitement at about a million miles an hour."
-- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar |
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| 2010: My Spaced-Out Odyssey |
| Monday, January 4, 2010 |
The Christmas season is over.
New Year's... is over. Thankfully.
As usual this season, I had plenty going on for Christmas and absolutely nothing for New Year's Eve, further intensifying my distaste for the occasion and giving me cause to wonder if I'll ever, ever have anywhere to be during the world's biggest annual party.
But I didn't, and like I said last year, if I had to choose between the two, I would invariably pick Christmas, because that's what really matters, for the purposes of this discussion. My brother and his wife flew into town on the 21st and departed on the 31st, and believe you me, there was much food, sleep, and merriment to be had in between. We did things a little bit differently this year, such as having Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve -- something we've never done before -- and as such, The Big Day was infinitely more restful for my poor mom than it usually is, given that all stress was basically off. Normally, we're up around 8:00 a.m. for gifts, and then we all hit the showers and scramble around to get ready in time for the grandparents to arrive for dinner.
And I slept in a bit myself this year. On a given Christmas morning, you might see me up and around as early as 5:30 a.m., putting out last-minute gifts, as well as my brother's yearly treasure hunt -- clues I leave strewn about the house, one leading to the next, the last one pointing the way to a pig-related gift, game, or fun doo-dad. But this year, I didn't even open my eyes until 8:05 a.m., by some bizarre unfolding of events, and I was immediately afraid I'd slept too late. As it turned out, I wouldn't be able to get anyone else out of bed for over another hour, and that gave me all the time I needed to get things in place.
It was just strange waking up after sunrise on Christmas morning, that's all I'm saying. It didn't feel the same; I'm used to sneaking around under the cover of relative darkness.
But today... today, seventeen straight days of vacation, sleep, and utter freedom (to do absolutely nothing) came to an end, and I reported for work at 10:00 a.m. (the usual time for a Monday morning). I wanted to gag. My two-point-five week reprieve from administrative assistant life didn't seem to fly by at the time, but now that it's over, it certainly seems short. I've been heard saying many times over the last few days that I expect this first week back to feel every bit as long as the 17 days I was gone. Day One wasn't bad -- the boss wasn't around for personal reasons and will probably be gone at least tomorrow as well, if not Wednesday -- so I was under precious little pressure. I have a couple of things I'd like to get completely taken care of before he returns, and if I can, there will also be precious little for him to complain about when he does. Other than that, it was just like any ordinary day at work, and for that, I am grateful. In the past, it's been hard to anticipate what I'm going back to when I return from even a three-day weekend, let alone a vacation at Christmas. In another day or two, I'll be completely over having to go back to my life. I am never ready for that, even after Christmas is over.
My brother and his wife mentioned the other night that her dad has two free round-trip airline tickets at his disposal that will expire at the end of February, so if they can get their hands on them, they may be back in town in two short months.
My next possible outing comes at the end of March. My oldest sister mentioned the possibility of me coming to Houston to see them for what amounts to the largest rodeo and concert series in North America, and once I can squeeze the dates out of her, I will start checking into air fares and see what I can work up.
Hope everyone's back safely, warm enough, and happy to be back to work. I can at least say I am two of the three. |
posted by N.T. @ 7:16 PM  |
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