21. Hotel, Motel, Holiday (for the) Win

I often get asked why I write this blog.

OK, often might be an overstatement, but it has come up a couple of times.

For the most part, I enjoy doing it (I say the most part, as there are times when it can be a pain in the arse; dull, frustrating and demoralising). I also find writing about the various challenges, demands and stresses of life to be quite therapeutic (so thank you for listening, and being my therapist).

From a more extrinsic point of view, one of the aims is for it to try and help shift the needle, even minimally, on encouraging more openness, honesty and comfort in chatting about stuff that matters to us; how we’re doing, and how we’re managing to cope with this whole life thing.

Of course, whether that happens is a different story, but we can always hope.

Despite (or maybe because of) this, every single time that I put out a new post, without fail, the following thought goes through my head: Why the bloody hell would anyone want to read this?

And that feeling has never been more pronounced than with the following post that you’ve so kindly clicked on. It’s basically some musings from a Christmas holiday spent back home in Luxembourg.

Err, really?

Yep. Mainly because when I left, I felt so strongly about the time away, that in the interest of “encouraging more openness, honesty and comfort in chatting about stuff that matters to us”, I felt compelled to write it down.

So, in a primary school ‘how were your holidays?’ type essay, here we go. I trust Mrs Warren would be proud.

Firstly, how bloody good is Christmas?

Not just the day itself, but the whole period. As we know all too well, it was Andy Williams and his luscious tones who declared that It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, and he makes a strong case.

It can often be an accumulation of some of life's most glorious stuff; family, friends, cheese, champagne, buying Park Lane, and not really giving a fuck about anything. That week between the 24th December and 1st January, when all social norms go out the window, is an absolute delight, as living our best guilt-free life is strongly encouraged.

Of course, a diet of red wine and Celebrations, and days consisting of nothing but Articulate and Mario Kart is hardly sustainable, but I really do think short term excess can be a good thing. I love the line and general philosophy for life “everything in moderation, including moderation”. Overindulging can be incredibly refreshing, and even though I leave Luxembourg with a fairly heavy heart (and an even heavier belly), I feel like a new person thanks to this unbelievably relaxing escape from the real world.

And what an escape it was. The end of a holiday is usually pretty gutting, and every time I have to leave home I get this weirdly overwhelming sense of sadness. It’s always the same. I finish packing, stare out my bedroom window and get overcome by this melancholic nostalgia. I don’t like it, but I also kind of do. It’s a sad feeling, but a powerful one. Overall, I suppose it’s a good thing.

It’s a bit of a paradox that seems to be the case for every holiday: We obviously want it to be amazing, but the better it is, the harder it is to return to normality.

As I know every trip back home will end up with me staring out my window like a sad little puppy, I try to pre-emptively acknowledge this in order to enjoy the holiday as much as I can. This is, of course, easier said than done, and can find myself slipping into that trap of taking it for granted. I guess the irrational side of the brain sometimes needs more convincing than us rationally telling it to “enjoy this”.

However, I do think an acknowledgement of the finite nature of anything can help us appreciate it more. I remember hearing Ricky Gervais, in a conversation with Russell Brand, say “One day you’ll hug your Mum for the last time. You’ll smell your last flower, you’ll eat your last meal. You won’t know it’s the last time, but it will be. So you’ve got to make the most of everything”. Slightly morbid I agree, but it's something that has stuck with me.

And it's an outlook that I’ve found to be helpful in enhancing not just holidays, but life more generally. Even though in this particular case, it just added to the emotion and nostalgia of leaving. Again, that paradox of fun times, I suppose.

This sense of nostalgia was never too far away throughout the entire trip, potentially exacerbated by not having been home for Christmas since 2018.

There was one moment in particular that stood out from a nostalgic viewpoint, which was on a visit to Top Squash in Sandweiler. If, in the likelihood that you don’t know where that is or what I’m talking about, it’s a squash club with a gym and a bar in it, next to Sandweiler Tennis Club and Sandweiler Football club. I spent a ludicrous amount of my youth there.

When I was back, I had a stroll around the football pitches. As I looked over them, I was suddenly flooded by a whole host of memories (yep, usually involving me being sat on the bench). It was an incredibly powerful, almost transcendent, moment.

Despite obviously wearing rose-tinted glasses, I couldn’t help but think that those really were the days.

Later that evening, being fortunate enough to be surrounded by family, friends, bottles of Bitburger, and a pack of Taboo cards, it occurred to me that maybe these really are the days...

It certainly felt like them. I listened to Adele’s absolute banger ‘Easy On Me’ about 723 times over the hols, and how apt, as I was fortunate enough in that period of time, for life to be doing exactly that.

However, I don’t want to paint the Christmas hols as too much of a Utopian Fantasy. It was amazing, but like anything, it had its moments. Not least with Covid, breaking everyone’s balls per usual.

Having tested positive for Covid in the run up to Christmas, it wasn’t actually until the morning of my rebooked flight on the 23rd December that I actually knew I could get home, and not have to spend the festive period by myself in isolation.

I found the unknown, in addition to the Covid travel rules seemingly changing by the minute, to be pretty stressful.

Also, despite usually being able to totally switch off and forget about work when on holiday, for some reason I had this underlying unease about getting back to the real world, and had those anxious butterflies floating about in my stomach when I thought about it too much. I loved the break, but this gloomy sense of foreboding was niggling away at me at times.

Regular life is something I find hard. Rewarding, fun and amazing at times yes, but quite often a struggle. It’s all relative of course, but the demands, stresses, pressures, pandemics and chaotic nature of it all, in combination with being a chronic over-thinker and self-doubting self-beater-upper can be a heavy burden to carry. Heavier than it perhaps appears on the outside.

However, whilst still an option, I’m going to continue to desperately cling on to this 24th December-3rd January get-these-societal-norms-in-the-bin outlook.

Is it an attitude that as a society, we could benefit from having a tad more of in our regular day-to-day lives? Not consuming copious amounts of cheese, booze and Monopoly on the regular per se (as appealing as that does sound), but maybe a sprinkling of giving less of a fuck in order to offset some of the pressures, stresses and anxieties of it all?

Perhaps, or maybe that’s just wishful thinking, and me just trying to make the transition back to reality slightly less daunting.

As for this transition back to reality, I hope it goes well for you, and that 2022 is a good one.

And hey, if January does start to become a bit of a slog, then if previous years are anything to go by, there’s comfort to be taken in that Christmas, with all its glorious excess, will come around again before we know it.

It really is The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.