Thanksgiving is around the corner here in the US. And my brain is feeling pulled in two directions like the proverbial wishbone. In short, I have a problem with holidays.
Now, don’t get me wrong - I love spending time with family and having time off work and all that other stuff. Turkey, conversation, celebration, etc. The problem I have with holidays is that they’re also an opportunity to get things done.
For better or for worse, I live my life in a low level of chaos. I am organized with my time and my schedule, but some things (like the stack of mail on my desk and the stack of laundry on the sofa) stay undone for a long time. This is a conscious choice because I don’t really have enough time to dot every i and cross every t.
Enter: Two glorious days off - Thursday and Friday. No one is emailing. No one wants a refund or wants to reschedule their workshop or needs help navigating their new product. I have the opportunity to catch up, to erase the task deficit that I endure from week to week, and to start fresh after Thanksgiving.
But Michelle, isn’t your family time and your rest time more important?
Of course it is. That is the other side of that wishbone. It would be awesome to just take some days off. But, that ready-for-anything-because-I-have-cleaned-my-task-plate feeling is awesome as well. And knocking at least some things off the to do list erodes some of the underlying stress in my life as well.
And the end of this week is an awesome time to release that stress.
Anybody else have a to-do ticker tape running in the back of your brains? Maybe it’s the entrepreneur in me that knows I need to get everything at once done for my company. And yesterday. Maybe it’s just me. But, part of the excitement of some holiday time off is that I get to, one by one, take things off my plate (and pile some cranberry sauce on).
Because, when we all go back to work on the Monday after Thanksgiving, it’s on like Donkey Kong. Inboxes will be flooded with holiday invitations, end of year reports begin to loom, everyone wants to purchase things for the new year, and with every holiday card that arrives, the pressure to create your own grows.
I believe the problem with holidays is that they aren’t long enough. If I had, say, two days to just relax and take things off my plate (weekends don’t count - they’re piled high with tasks) and then another three or four days to spend with the family, that would be AWESOME. Better yet? What if we had an actual week off to catch up and then another week to spend chillin’? Fantastico.
But, most of us don’t have that. We, as a society, are climbing on the backs of each other to clamor to the top of the proverbial mountain of success and trampling our sanity on the way up. It’s like some version of a Saw movie.
If we all stay here holding onto this bar and don’t try to grab that million dollar check over there, nobody will get decapitated. Just keep your hands on the bar. Keep your hands on the bar. Keep your hands on the…
You know humans. We’re greedy little assholes. Of course one of us is going to go grab that check. And we can’t all agree to take days off. Inevitably, someone else works through the holiday, burning the midnight gravy, making it so that when we all return to work, we’re inundated. We. Just. Can’t. Stop. Working.
Because we’re greedy. Because when we don’t all agree, as a society, to chill the heck out for a few weeks, those who were willing to chill are decapitated by the greedy million dollar check-grabbing few.
Maybe this blog is a little ranty. But, I believe that the problem with holidays is that we don’t all take them.
So, I guess I got my answer, right? Wishbone…snap. Don’t let go of the bar, Michelle. If we all just decide to rest together, we can all rest. Don’t let go of the…
Happy holidays, friends.
Love,
Michelle