{"id":4849,"date":"2019-12-02T17:14:11","date_gmt":"2019-12-02T16:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4849"},"modified":"2020-03-23T08:38:08","modified_gmt":"2020-03-23T07:38:08","slug":"the-joy-of-discomfort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4849","title":{"rendered":"The Joy of Discomfort"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On Friday we bought snacks at the train station, ate a fast\nfood meal that I treat myself to whenever I travel, and got on the train. It left\nat 15:30 and by the time we were in the country the sky was darkening. An hour\ninto our trip, the sky was pitch black. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prague. Four hours of zooming through the country. Nipping a\nflask of whiskey. Four waters. Pistachios, lots of pistachios, more pistachios\nthan a person should eat. Short spurts of reading punctuated by shifting and\ntrying to make my well-padded ass more comfortable. Two long delays in the dark\ncountry somewhere in central Czech. Some complaining. Bratislava.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a peculiar devotion to my weekend comfort zone. It\u2019s decorated\nin televisions and lined with flannel cushions. My cat is there. Burke is\nthere. A couch with a sign above it: Home is where the pants aren\u2019t. In my\ncomfort zone there is no place for stress or anxiety or the possibility of a\ncurve ball or a chance I might not get what I want. There\u2019s a strict No English\nInstruction rule. The Saturday a month I have to teach nearly kills me.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But once I\u2019m out of the comfort zone, I make the most of it.\nWhenever I complain that I have to go out on a weekend night when I\u2019d far\nprefer to sit in my pjs and read, Burke always says: you\u2019ll be happy once you\u2019re\nthere. And she\u2019s always right. It\u2019s the getting out of the comfort zone that\nseems to be the hardest part. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So this weekend I cast fate to the wind. I stayed out until\n3 am on Friday, slept until 10:30 on Saturday, woke up and dined on bread and cheese.\nI did not comb my hair.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We went to a Christmas market which was fully committed to food\nand hot alcohol drinks. There were virtually no kiosks selling the knick-knacks\nand tchotchkes rampant in Czechs markets. The scene was a classic. Cold air.\nBlue skies. An ancient town square. Little kiosks decked out in traditional and\ncharming Christmas decorations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My first drink is a hot mulled wine. Simple and delicious\nand on a relatively strict time schedule of tastiness. The very moment mulled\nwine passes from a steaming beverage into no-longer-hot it also passes into\nno-longer-good and you\u2019re soon holding a cool-ish cup of grape juice and tart\noranges.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In any event, this is my rationale for pounding it.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Still, there is a huge amount of joy that comes along with\nit and the atmosphere. It\u2019s during my second hot beverage \u2013 a ginger, cinnamon,\nhard alcohol concoction \u2013 when I feel the unmitigated joy. Its components are\nall equally necessary. The cheery atmosphere, Christmas music, the just\nbeginning holiday season, the cold, fortifying oneself from the cold with a warm\nboozy drink. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though there are people for whom standing in the cold\nwith a drink would be the very definition of hell, it\u2019s something that brings\nme a great deal of joy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s interesting the number of joys that result from discomfort. There\u2019s nothing quite as pleasant as the high I get after a vigorous workout. Or the quiet pleasure of a dark early morning, sitting at my computer with a cup of coffee and trying to remember why I write. Or getting out of my comfort zone and standing in the cold. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next week I teach on Saturday, so Burke will have to talk me off the ledge. But until then I can sip this drink and drink in the joy of not knowing what’s coming in the next few hours. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Friday we bought snacks at the train station, ate a fast food meal that I treat myself to whenever I travel, and got on the train. It left at 15:30 and by the time we were in the country the sky was darkening. An hour into our trip, the sky was pitch black. Prague. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4851,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/damiengaleone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/home-no-pants.jpg?fit=2221%2C1960&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-1gd","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4849"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4852,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4849\/revisions\/4852"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}