Draught of Forgetfulness

Editor's note: Normally this would be great place for a Year In Review post. But fuck 2017. Check back next year on the off chance 2018 isn't suck a dick.

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It would stand to reason, I guess, that when I'm on vacation (and not going anywhere) I actually have more time and space to put in some thought and really apply myself to this whole blog thing. Really settle into a subject and give it more than a cursory first-draft effort before falling into bed just in time to under-sleep before having a bad day at work. That's usually how this goes, by the way: I have a full Thursday with work and kids and then cram this blog thing in between shower and bedtime, usually rubbing right up against Friday by the time I'm finished.

I've been off of work on a long-planned extended leave, all in for more than two weeks. I'm exactly eight days into it now. I had all day to get around to writing this and... here I am at 11:54 pm trying to cram this in between the shower and bedtime. Friday is definitely going to happen before I finish typing, I guarantee it.

What I didn't realize is that being away from work means being genuinely unplugged from tidal forces driving the ebb and flow of news cycles and popular culture. Mostly it's a revelation about how much time I must be spending at work reading about stuff that doesn't have anything to do with my actual job. Which is probably a problem eventually considering the computers I use are all government owned and subject to heavy scrutiny for appropriate use. When I show up writing about how I'm out of work for an extended non-planned leave of permanent absence, we'll all immediately understand why.

I don't have a lot to say about what is going on in the world at the minute. But that's neither an excuse or an apology or even an explanation about the content here this evening. It's more of a status report. I've tried this multi-week travel-free holiday thing before* and I've found it takes me about a week or so to actually begin to relax a little. I'm so keyed into the rhythm of the two-day weekend, I start off with on normal day off and five or six days in a row that I'm convinced are Sundays, with all the impending non-relaxation therein implied. Here I am on the eve of my second Friday in a row off and only just now am I beginning to not be concerned as to what time it is, where I have to be, what's happening in the morning or what needs accomplishing.

Related to that, I have no idea what the president has tweeted or not tweeted. If there's still a War on Christmas, I'm definitely not up to date on all the latest despatches. I know there's one prince who's going to be a dad and another one who has a hot American girlfriend, or at least I hope they're talking about different princes. Look, whatever. All I can tell you for sure is that it hasn't rained in Southern California throughout the duration of this whole "rainy season" as yet, so I'm pretty certain everything is going to be burned down before Martin Luther King Jr. Day. So even though not a lot is going on, it's not fair to say there isn't a lot on my mind.

Christmas was fine. I'm sure New Year's Day will be fine too. I'm lucky to be surrounded by family and friend and blah blah blabbity blah... The only way to really relax is to simplify your goals. If I went into this thinking I needed to reach some level of existential comfort or spiritual centeredness, I'd have been fucked before I even started. Two and a half weeks is a long time to take off work, but it's not an actual long time, not cosmically, not geologically, not evolutionarily, not even in terms of one person's circadian rhythm. That's about how long it takes to adjust to a new time zone, usually just in time for vacation to be over, meaning you immediately have to go home and get un-used to it. I'm not trying to unravel myself and stitch myself back together here.

I'm a realist about what I can do, so I've narrowed it down: 1) Eat poorly. 2) Get little to no exercise. 3) Buy stretchier clothes.

That's it. All achievable. And better: all related. If I knock out the first two (so far so fucking good... who else do you know you scratch baked and then ate a whole pie himself?), the last one just naturally follows, not as a choice but as necessity. As a biological and logistical imperative.

I'd say I'll let you know how it goes, but at this point, all results are unavoidable. The future is written. Happy New Year.

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*you can't get me to roll out "staycation" unironically. You just can't.