12.26.16 After-holiday let-down

After-holiday let down makes loads of sense.

Some of us experience this when our lives have some tough stuff that is put aside while we involve ourselves in holiday preparation and planning and interactions and gathering.

We suspend our usual ways in which we are aware of bigger concerns and our emotions about them , while having a break involving a holiday or project or deadline or illness.

When this time-out-of-time ends, we come face to face with a backlog of feelings and thoughts that went right along without a pause, while we were otherwise distracted.

When things settle down, there is the backlog, noisy and sometimes demanding and often enough overwhelming to encounter, and strangely unanticipated .

We end up surprised by the intensity of our feelings that clamor up so quickly , all of a sudden. Small tsunami , we struggle to catch our breath, to not lose our footing. We wonder what the heck is going on.

But if we're here long enough, we begin to get the predictability of this dynamic.

The let-down. The despair. The my-life-seems-a-wreck! The sometimes drama and upset . 

And yet, if you talk to people who don't just run on empty and thrive on distraction 24/7, you'll find how usual this is .

When you start getting why this would happen, it's easier to anticipate. 

To realize that you've been forgetting all about planking for the future or dealing with a health concern or your long term finances or other issues that might benefit from looking into or problem solving about or coming to some kind of acceptance. 

It's like you've been submerged in holiday or project or acute episode deals, and you find yourself finally coming up for air, only to encounter the things you'd rather forget .

There they are, complicated and tangled up and confusing and difficult, sitting right where you left them .

Now I finally get this. I get it when holidays are about to approach. I get it while I'm subsumed in activity. And I especially get it as things begin to wind down.

That the normal brass tacks of issues and problems and pressing difficulties and things, that need attending to , will all be sitting there, pent up and built up , ready to let loose when I'm over and done with the interlude.