On Friday afternoon, I wrote an email. I checked it twice, then hit send. I couldn’t believe it – I was done for the holidays. Tears began formulating in my eye. I then dressed and walked through the park to our local pub, where two of my friends were waiting to ring in the season with food, beer, and several darts of 80 proof liver juice.
In the morning, I suffered what could only be described as the worst hangover on Earth since Alexander the Great woke in Macedonia and said ‘I burned down what…?” I leapt up in a panic. I walked through the flat and then through the other room. I walked out onto the balcony and rummaged through a few boxes out there. I sat at my desk and wrote a few sentences that grouped themselves into a paragraph. Some character formed himself on the page and I named the character Willy.
I went with it. Let’s write this guy out, shall we. I had coffee. Willy was having trouble finding his bearings. He was at a local park where we was looking for a group of friends to take part in a pickup soccer rugby match. He couldn’t find anyone, but he did find the field. The place was desolate. Paper bags and a lone empty vodka Becherovka bottle littered the corners. People had been there, but they weren’t there now. Feeling edgy, Willy then stows his rugby ball behind some bushes and sets off on a little trek through the woods. It’s there he finds a house. He goes in and finds the place warm, decorated for Christmas, but a real mess. He clicks his tongue and starts cleaning.
I stopped writing and laid down. Good ole Willy. Why, I wondered does he feel the need to fill his time with work. Can’t just sit down and chill out. I drifted off to sleep and woke up in a panic ninety minutes later. Burke peppered me with a few questions as I ran around in a circle trying to figure out what it was I had forgotten to do. It was something out of my dream. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was something I was meant to be doing – fill out a form, click a button, sign in to something somewhere for someone. When my heart stopped palpitating, I slowly came back to the reality that I didn’t have to do anything. I was – for the first time in 5 months – under no obligations, burdened with no duties or tasks, and absolutely free.
Seems my dog-given anxiety and my tendency to overwork and eschew days off has crept up to bite me in the existentially angsty rump. I – it seems – have lost the ability to let go and relax. Though that might be overstating it, I have certainly been conditioned to not chill out in recent years. And this is where I promised that I would relearn that skill over the Christmas break. I shall celebrate the Horizontal Christmas. That is, I will rush to no task, I will do no work for any group that doesn’t share my name, physical dimensions, and social security number.
At first, I have trouble with this. My eyes and hands seek work and busyness. Emails get looked at and, only after a serious effort, put off. Dishes almost get washed. Floors almost get cleaned. But my brain demands the obeyance of the rules. When these old habits come back to pester me, I grab a book or look into the nearest TV. I enjoy inertia. I kick up my feet both figurately and literally. I don’t think about work. And then I make a Bloody Mary.
Merry Horizontal Christmas!
