What I Did on Winter Break

Last month I was out to dinner with a colleague and I mentioned that my time at home would be the longest I’ve been away from the office in years. According to her European sensibilities, this was appalling. I joked with her that I feared if I ever took more than a week off at a time, I might have a nervous breakdown when it was time to go back. The Friday before the Sunday I flew, that joke was looking close to my reality. Three things always come to mind when faced with continuing the life of a working stiff.

1. Is there a way to become independently wealthy?
2. Criminal activity.
3. Why wasn't I born into royalty or at least the Hilton family?

Of course once I got back, it was fine. How did we spend our time? Mostly just the three of us hanging out.

Time flew by. For the first time ever during vacation I avoided checking and responding to business email. I also avoided running myself ragged with obligations. It felt good. It also served as a bit of an experiment. We all have family in our lives that we probably wonder, if I didn’t make the effort to contact them, would they contact me? I can only speak for myself, but the answer is no, they would not make the effort. And I’ve decided that’s okay. I just won’t worry so much about making the effort anymore.

My friend T called early in my vacation and asked me if I was sleeping okay. I told her that I had been getting up about five o’clock every morning and said that was okay because then I could watch whatever I wanted on television. She laughed but it is not far from the truth. I fell back in love with my TiVo and Netflix. If you have food, shelter, and a loving family, these two things are all you need. I caught up with my favourite HBO series with Netflix. H and I watched the last season of The Sopranos. I will miss the complex characters and the stories that like life, never come to a neat end.

Thanks to our buddy M in Houston, A and I caught up on our favourite reality show, Project Runway and we also watched several reruns of Malcolm in the Middle. We laughed a lot. It was glorious.