The downside

The thing I HATE about going on vacations is coming back. Great one, Fned... what a breakthrough, huh?

Yeah, well, tough.

To me, coming back from vacations is REAL HELL, and I'm not talking about the conventional "smashing the alarm clock in a wall" thing.

It's really a painful and exhausting physical and mental process.... and it's getting harder and harder each time.

I remember when I came back from Japan last year. It may not have been apparent at the time, at least not on the bloggersphere, but I was a real mess. For weeks I could simply NOT get back into the rhythm of things. My eating patterns where all messed up. My attention span was next to zero. My head felt stuck in a perpetual mist storm and the only thing that seemed to get my spirits up was watching downloaded episodes of Hana Yori Dango over and over again and shopping for rice crackers and bottled green tea at the Japanese food shop near Opéra (I would take the 30 minute subway ride during my lunch break just to get my hand on some bottled matcha). In the weekends, I would spend them either slobbing around in the house reading "Les Japonais" by Karyn Poupée or else dragging hubby all over town to such and such exposition on Japanese (insert whatever word you want here) that was showing in Paris - it didn't help that last year was the 150 anniversary of the Friendship Agreement between France and Japan.

Hubby can tell you what a mess I was.

It took me two months to snap out of it. To get back into the habit of NOT coming home from work and opening my computer to go check out the online Japanese forums on mangas and animes. To get back into the need and pleasure of going to the gym, of eating REAL meals again instead of rice crackers and soy bean pastries. Of getting my head out of the clouds and realizing that THIS was the real world and that I needed to get my act together.

This time I thought I would be better prepared for the rough patch I knew would come when we got back. Before we left, I worked out every day to the very last minute (I did a 1 hour workout session at the gym 2 hours before having to leave for the airport). I did 60 push-ups every morning while we were on the road and kept reading the news in the banking sector from my iPhone whenever I reached a WiFi hotspot. I kept pumping myself with the thought of jumping back into work when we got back, making mental to-do lists of the projects I was going to be piloting. Emailing friends and setting up meet-ups when we got home. Buying cute tee-shirts and football jerseys to motivate me to hit the gym first thing (there is no such thing as gym fashion in my book, as long as it's comfy).

I honestly thought it would work.



It didn't.




At least not completely.





I'm not as in a bad shape as last time, and for that I am grateful. I was able to hit the ground running at work (and good thing too, because things were really hectic when I got back and being the zombie I was last time would have seriously gotten me fired this time around) and I even managed to enjoy the dates and meetups with our friends.

But my mind is still elsewhere. It's not exactly buried in a deep frenzy of need of Alfajores or Malbec but my head is simply not here right now. Like last time, my eyes, my mind, my entire me feels like it's walking in a dark gray mist (and it's not the Paris gloomy weather). I have trouble being focused and whenever I have free time my mind wanders off to far away lands and foreign sounds that must be languages.

What's even worse, my mind wanders off to places where it tells me I COULD be standing at right this minute. Of place where I SHOULD be standing at, in fact, right this minute. Places I should be living in. Cities I should be exploring. Streets I should be walking on. People I should be meeting. Jobs I should be doing.

My mind tells me THIS is wrong. HERE is wrong. I hear a clock ticking in the back of my head... a voice telling me "what tha f*ck are you DOOINNNNNGGGG!!!!!"......



I push it all away. I tell myself to shut up. I yell back that this is the life I LOVE. I sincerely do believe this. I know myself that well, at least in that department. I've always wanted the stability. I've always wanted the routine. I love routine. It makes my life have an order and a direction and that is part of who I am. The Virgo in me is much more present than the mexican/american/explorer/tourist/adventurer/woman/dreamer/etc in me.

I scream back that I. COULD. NOT . HAVE . IT . ANY . BETTER !!!!!

And by the time all the yelling and screaming is done I'm all tired and exhausted. My enthusiasm, my energy, my curiosity, it's all gone. What is left is just a tired out old shell. I just feel like crawling up in bed and turning on 30 Rock.


I know this will pass. It always does. At least this time around it only took me 2 weeks to realize I was suffering from post-vacation depression and not 2 months like last time.



Fned.