Idle Thoughts

So, last week I was on holiday.  I'll be back on holiday, this time for two weeks, next week.  For the time being, I'm back at work.  Quite honestly, I resent having to split my Summer break in this way: it takes me a week to wind down from the stress of work.  Which is why I used to try and take three consecutive weeks in the Summer - I'd have a whole fortnight feeling completely relaxed.  Moreover, there would always come a point, midway through the three weeks, when I'd be able to completely forget work altogether, existing in a blissful bubble of carefree joy for a few days.  So, having become completely zoned out of work by the end of last week, I found myself rudely thrust back into the fray on Monday.  I can tell you that by the end of yesterday, it felt like I'd never been away.  So, I'll have to stat all over again next week.

Anyway, you'd have been forgiven for not realising I was o holiday last week: I don't think I mentioned it at all here.  Certainly, there were no pictures and no videos posted here.  Indeed, I didn't actually take any last week.  Which is unusual, I know, as I generally seem obsessed with chronicling my Summer excursions.  But last week, I was feeling selfish. I just wanted the first week of my holiday to be entirely about me.  I didn't want to share any of it with anyone else, either vicariously through videos and pictures, or by inviting anyone else along.  The past few weeks at work were bruising for me and I badly needed some time alone with myself.   Being free to think, without the distractions and frustrations of work, is hugely therapeutic - everything becomes much clearer.  Things which had seemed like major problems are put into perspective and revealed as mere irritations.

Certainly, it seems clearer than ever now that, once my mortgage is paid off next April (barring disasters), I'm going to have to make serious changes with regard to work.  If not giving up this lousy job completely, I'm more determined than ever to at least reduce my hours until I find something better.  Even if I don't find something better, I'll at least have more time to myself.  It also has become obvious that there are some parts of my past I really have to let go of - some things are just never going to change, so I need to move on.   But it isn't just life decisions that get worked through when I've got time to think.  I also sometimes find myself speculating about the lives I might have lived, but didn't.  I find my mind wandering into idle fantasies.  On Friday, for instance, as I walked through a piece of down land I particularly like, with the sun blazing down, a gentle breeze moving the tall grass and a buzzard wheeling overhead, I found myself imagining that my walk would culminate, not in the car park of the country park I was in, but with me walking through the back gate of a cottage.  I'd walk down the path and through the back door into the kitchen, whee I'd sit down and drink beer with a beautiful woman I'd never seen before, but who I clearly knew well, as late afternoon turned into evening.  It all seemed so idyllic, but was over so quickly.  Quite where that particular idle fantasy came from, I don't know.  It will never come to pass in reality, I know.  But it was nice while it lasted.