Everything in its place and a place for everything. That way, it takes minutes to go from creative chaos to calm, and the uncluttered mind can fly free

Apr 27, 2016

How To Control Your Life

Part 76

It’s a beautiful day, but I’m stuck inside
Staring at this screen, working nine ’til five.
How I hate this job, ‘cos the days do drag -
They work me like a dog, and the money’s bad.

Oh cheer up, cheer up, don’t be blue,
Don’t forget it’s home-time soon -
We’ll make it through another working day.
I need a holiday,
I need a holiday with my friend.

I’m working every day;
I’m working every day for the weekend.
Looking at my watch, for the millionth time.
The days go slow, and then the evenings fly.
When I’m outta this place, and the day’s been won,
I’m going out with my mates, hanging out in the sun.

Oh cheer up, cheer up, don’t be blue,
Don’t forget it’s home-time soon -
We’ll make it through another working day.
I need a holiday…

I Need a Holiday by Roy Stride; from the album Scouting For Girls (2007)
by the band of the same name

It’s that time of year again. The brochures are out in the travel agencies, the ads ad nauseam are everywhere in CGI colours, and the first responders are already posting their holiday pictures all over the social media sites (and, if you’re not careful, on a smartphone near you).

Yes, already people are returning from holiday (they’ve cannily learned that ‘Summer’ has been coming earlier rather than later, at least in the Western hemisphere, for a few years now…), and all too soon we’ll all be back at our desks, or counters, or production lines or whatever.

And there’s the rub: the daily rubbing of edges against our bodies, spirits and souls - daily life.

When you’re back from holiday, what do you do? Apart from collect pets, unpack, catch up with the washing, tell everyone you’re back, generally pick up the threads - and post all those pictures on social media sites, of course? Do you start planning the next thing to look forward to? The next bit of relief from the day-to-day drudgery of life? Start planning the next holiday? Relive it all through telling friends all about the holiday (and of course posting pictures on social media sites)?

It’s not enough, if you want to get the most out of the holiday experience.

Holidays are expensive, and not only in terms of money. They take a lot of planning, organising, scheduling and so on (where? when? who with? how to get there? for how long? vaccinations? what about the cat/dog/hamster/ goldfish? neighbour popping in, housesitter, automated lighting scheme or home-monitoring app?…). And even if you don’t get hijacked, kidnapped and/or murdered, there are a fair few people who return from their holidays each year substantially the worse for wear, quite apart from the hangovers and over-indulgence in strange and exotic food. Then let the insurance claims begin (the legal profession loves other people’s holidays almost more than their own).

If it’s all going to be worth it, you need to do something about the aftermath of your holiday. Holidays say a lot about who you are, and that’s valuable information. Ask yourself some questions after the dust has settled and the sand is out of the beachwear and in the washing machine filter; questions such as:

♦ Did I really enjoy the holiday and, if not, why not?
Was it actually your choice to go where you did, have the kind of holiday you did? Or did you go there because someone else wanted to go there and you always end up giving in (to them, or because you’re a bit of a pushover generally)? Did you go where you did, on that type of holiday, because it’s what you always do - and, if so, is it time to change? Or did the holiday simply have too many variables over which you had no control (flights, weather, safety, and so on)? Or perhaps the holiday highlighted problems in your relationship with the people with whom you shared the holiday?

♦ Was I glad to get away - anywhere, whatever?
If you were so desperate to get away, why? Aren’t you happy where you’re living, what you do for work, or with the people you have to be with every day?

♦ Was I dreading coming home?
Was that because of what was waiting for you at home? Letters and e-mails and text messages you didn’t want to face? Things to do that you really don’t want to do/can’t do? A big contrast between home and holiday which shows the fissures and flaws of home like sunlight shows dust? Did you want to stay in your holiday destination for ever, permanently, and if so, why? What did your holiday destination have that home doesn’t?

These questions, which can nag subliminally after your holiday - quite apart from the catching-up-with-the-washing and all that stuff - can make the aftermath of a holiday exhausting. In fact it can be so bad that it can all make you feel as if you need another holiday, right now.

Then there’s that first opening of the front door when you get back. How did you feel? Was the seeing-with-new-eyes shabbiness of your home a horrid contrast to the gleaming, spick-and-span holiday residence, or the other way round? What about the smell? All homes have a smell, but when you’re living in your home all the time you don’t necessarily recognise it as bad (musty, or damp, or full of lingering cooking smells - or worse). When you come back from being somewhere completely different, you can smell that smell. And does this place feel like home, on first opening the door, or prison? Or somewhere in between - and, if so, what?

What did you - and the family if you have one (as ever, by family I mean the people with whom you live and choose to spend your life) - do when you first came back into your home? Do you have rituals (put the heating/kettle/ electric blankets on; check the answerphone; sort through the post) and/or specific tasks that each of you naturally do, or are you a touch lost and aimless? Do you annoy each other or do you seamlessly go about your own particular jobs?

Holidays take you out of the stream of your normal, everyday life. If you want to control your life, this is an invaluable chance to capture almost a snapshot of yourself from the outside. Those key moments - when you realised you were/weren’t enjoying yourself, when you found you were dreading coming home, when you first opened your front door, and so on - were startlingly-lit snapshots of your life. Don’t hide them from yourself, and don’t hide from them - use them.

You can use these moments, these realisations, to make changes in your life which will make it better. They’ll be hard, sometimes very hard (is this relationship really working or not? do I really want to live here any more? what the hell am I doing with my life?), but better make the changes now - when your life is, to an extent, disrupted anyway by the holiday - than realise later that it’s too late and you’ve made all the wrong choices and lived with them. Lived with them when you could have changed them.

Take a real break: take yourself out of your life for a further short time and reassess. Shut yourself in your bedroom or office, spend a couple of hours in your favourite bar, find a quiet bench in a park or graveyard - whatever - and ask yourself the hard questions. Debrief yourself, as it were, after your holiday.

Then all that hard work, that planning and organising and money-spending and all the rest of it, will have been worthwhile - really worthwhile - and you’ll have had a real return on the heavy investment you made in that holiday. You’ll feel - even if the actual holiday was a disaster of traffic hold-ups, delayed flights, missing luggage, grotty accommodation, gippy tummies, sunburn, rows, backache, boredom or even broken bones - that it was worth it. (Even if that feeling only comes at some later date and after a few legal fees or suchlike…) You’ll know that you were given an insight into your life that you might otherwise never have had, or would only have had at the expense of a lot of visits to the psychologist and long soul-searching.

You will feel more in control of your life - and that’s invaluable.

Twitter: Maryon Jeane