end of the line
Today, January 2, is my last day of my so-called “Christmas Break”.
All told, it was some time away from work. I got some stuff done, got some books read, played a little music, and, I guess, didn’t think too hard about project deadlines for a couple of weeks, but at the same time, it wasn’t the restful and rejuvenating time I was kind of hoping it would be.
The holidays always hit me with a bit of melancholy; mostly because of the pressure to do the traditional things, when those don’t always work for me. There’s also a bit of mourning; not so much for loved ones lost (though there is that), but a mourning of possibilities of what our culture tells me things ought to be like, as opposed to what the ended up being. This is, song lyrics aside, decidedly *not* the most wonderful time of the year, at least from where I’m sitting.
It probably didn’t help that I started off the year finishing Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography, Born To Run, which is a great book that I’d recommend, though the way Springsteen describes his struggle with depression and anxiety really speaks to me; his descriptions of his experience come really close to describing mine; my lovely spouse tells me that’s because we’re both musicians and that our perspectives are similar.
She’s probably right, but I was just startled to be compared to Bruce Springsteen.
Oh well; I may look into changing up my annual leave use patterns this year; this holiday season, capping off a year as unanimously regarded in the negative as 2018 was, didn’t really clear the decks the way I’d have liked.
