Monday Morning, January 4th...I Thought You Would Never Come

It's not that I'm anti-holiday, it's just that I'm not really all that big on some of what goes along with holidays. This includes the deviation from the "norm" that goes with most of the rest of the days of the year. I suspect that kind of feeling isn't unique to me, so I'll take come comfort in the notion that I'm not totally nuts...well at least with regard to my need for a comforting routine.

The other tricky element for me that comes with holidays is the notion of having a lot of extra time off. This year was especially bad, as I had a ton of days that I had to take or else lose them forever. I earn about 33 vacation days a year, and while I can carry over half of what I earn into the new year, anything over and above that is lost forever. Coming into December I had to schedule a lot of time off in order to get my "carry-0ver" number to a more manageable total, which ended up being, I think, 11.5. This means, of course, that I'm starting the year with 44.5 vacation days to in 2010, of which I could carry over 16.5 into 2011 (and so on and so forth).

Accounting aside, the time off thing is interesting because I simply don't feel well when I have so much extra time on my hands. "Don't feel well" is a shorthand way of saying restless, bored, over-eating, etc., all of which simply don't help me all that much. Don't get me wrong: I like down-time as much as anyone else, but I guess for me I like it in very small quantities. A 30 minute episode of Family Guy works well in that regard. I try and plan things to do during time-off stretches, but circumstances change (cars break-down for example) and all of a sudden I'm sitting here stewing and stressing. Not good.

There are a few other dynamics at work here, but I'll defer on them in order to protect the innocent and not disgust myself (let alone the odd stranger that might stumble upon this and actually get this far). Suffice to say I have an interesting home-life. "Interesting" is being polite. The "interesting" element only compounds things to about 10th power.

Yes, I am glad that it's January 4th.