The Daily Grind

After awhile without a break--after week after week after week after week of the same stuff--same people, same situations--, no matter what you do for a living, you begin to feel like this guy on Monday morning. I don't know how he feels, of course, but I sure know how I'd feel if it were me. Well for all intents and purposes, it is me, on many a Monday morning.

And then come Friday, provided you've survived your five days of work,  you have just enough time (ideally) to rest up for the next round. Not much time to think about it. Just catch your breath and get back in there.  Thus you can get pretty mired in your routines, to where you can't see past them. They become your total reality. (Yeesh, what a terrifying thought!)  

I'm currently on vacation from All That, and have been since last Friday at 4:30. Every so often you simply have to have a number of days away that's greater than 2 or 3, just to pull yourself out of your regular morass of workshit. It helps if you go somewhere, but even a staycation can achieve this result. Gotta air out, just like a pair of shoes..

It always takes a couple days on vacation for your body to realize you're on vacation, a decompression process where you're just numb for awhile. This one took about 5 days. By Wednesday, I was feeling(as they'd say in the COPD commercials)a significant improvement in my decompression.

Being a recuperating period, there is usually lots of video viewing in these first days of vacation, this time the likes of A Clockwork Orange, Taxi Driver, My Cousin Vinny, Coccoon(yes I'm leaning toward the happier Hollywood endings..). 

I actually have three weeks this time out, more time off than I've ever had in my 21 years of employment--save being laid-off for a couple 5 or 6 months back in '94. So I'm just completing my first week of the three. 

Musical creativity does happen(as in writing/recording)during these vacations, generally toward the end- I guess, when I'm "optimally decompressed". I don't think I've ever gone on vacation and started working on musical stuff the next day, or even the one after that. 

More often than not, I grab vacation a week at a time, and took two last year about this time. Three weeks is more time than I'm used to taking, but I'm sure I'll find something to do with it--even if it's nothing. 

It's been a nice week. A nice grind-less week. Here's to two more!