It’s too easy to get caught up in the idea that days where you do nothing are wasted. This is especially true if you’re wired like me, looking to extract the maximum benefit out of anything you put your time towards. It is a destructive habit and the cause of the need for a “holiday from the holiday” that many experience upon their return. So for days like today, one spent doing nothing much of anything at all, aren’t wasted. Instead they are the time to take stock of what has been, what will be and, if you’re lucky, come to grips with things that may have been troubling you for some time.
Today we only had the loose idea of going to see a movie, tossing up between Finding Dory (my wife’s vote) and Independence Day: Resurgence (our hosts vote). We landed on the latter, although honestly I had no idea what we were seeing until we got there (I was deep in thought, more on why in a sec). Since our slumber saw us rise rather late in the day our breakfast was enough to tide us over for the movie’s duration, the popcorn left for the other patron’s enjoyment.
The movie itself was enjoyable if highly predictable. It’s something of a touchstone for my generation, being one of the first “big” movies many of us would’ve been old enough to remember seeing in some detail. It does a good job of paying homage to the past but, unfortunately, makes the unforgivable mistake of loudly crying sequel at the end. I know Hollywood isn’t exactly renowned for taking risks with new IP but dredging up a 20 year old movie and setting it up for unlimited sequels feels like a new kind of low, if that’s even possible.
I’ll still probably watch them though. I feel kind of dirty for typing that.
My wife wanted to indulge in the poutine that Canada is famous for whilst we were here but her lactose intolerance (even with the assistance of lactese tablets) was getting the better of her. So instead we went to a local burger house called Bistro Burger Town and saddled ourselves up for a very late lunch. My lunch of a smokey BBQ burger and chips was fantastic, washed down by the Boreale Rousse beer that I had become fond of over the past few days. Afterwards we made our way back home making a quick pit stop for supplies before settling into a few TV episodes before calling it a night.
I realized today where that feeling of “wanting it to be over” was coming from. Holidays give you time to think on a scale that cannot be matched, allowing all those thoughts that you push to one side to surface anew. Couple that with a lack of any form of routine and you’ve got a recipe for a weird kind of anxiety that, in my case, manifests itself in a desire for it all to be over. This feeling does go away when the holiday finishes and I return to the order of my normal life, but that doesn’t mean the things that cause it in the first place are going away.
Indeed I’ve realized that since this is my first long period of breaking away from routine in 6 years I’ve got a lot of pent up thinking to do. I’m lucky enough to have most of the larger issues already sorted in my life but there are still some fundamentals I think need to be addressed. Funnily enough some of them concern this very blog itself, something that’s been an ongoing presence in my life for the better part of 8 years. Thinking about them a bit more I realize all of them are about change, where it will lead me and whether or not I want to be the agent of it.
Come to think of it, I think our honeymoon on Turtle Island might be to blame for all this.
Although I never posted them (and I get the feeling I should now, although I think they’re at home unfortunately) I did actually blog the majority of the honeymoon whilst we were on Turtle Island. For the first half of the trip the posts were much like this, recounting the events for posterity and a little waffle at the end, however about halfway through they changed dramatically. I remember having the most vivid dreams, all in series, that seemed to draw on numerous aspects of my life from the years before. Whilst I don’t believe there’s any meaning to derive from the dreams themselves I do believe the rapid succession was a kind of unwinding of pent up stress that I was finally able to let go of.
And what would await me at the end of this trip? 6 nights at a resort in Greece, specifically chosen to allow us to unwind at the end of the trip.
It would seem I’ve crafted my own web upon which I’ve become tangled. Thankfully I think it’s a problem that will be easy to address and will ultimately see this holiday mean a lot more than just the memories and pictures we bring back with us.
