Back in Circulation

Usually, when I am back after a break/vacation, I tend to be slightly jittery for the first few days just thinking about the tons of emails and work that I need to catch up with. Life is brutal to people who go on vacations. Isn't it? Makes me wonder if it is ever possible to 'invent' a vacation on returning from which one has nothing to catch up with. Or perhaps a vacation that one doesn't have to return from....err, I mean to the business of catching up and the like. I am not sure I've made myself crystal clear. So here we go again. What I actually mean is why not have a vacation that's sort of permanent and so enlightening that one either manages to drift along without any catching up to do later on or whatever? If you go on a vacation to recharge your batteries and come back only to let them be drained in no time just seeing the pending pile of emails and other such things, what's the big deal? I'm just making up for not being able to ramble last week. Ignore me.

While on the topic of vacations and catching up, have you noticed? When you come back to see what has changed with the world, you are, more often than not, likely to be staring at a situation wherein every single thing (that you are not so interested in but will however have to catch up with) except what you really, desperately, wanted to see some progress in, has progressed at a phenomenal rate. Sigh. I told you. Life is brutal to people who go on vacations. 

But when one gets to read a hilarious and yet thoughtful cartoon strip by one's favourite cartoonist amidst the tons of other - mostly boring - emails waiting to be read, the act of think-laughing or laugh-thinking (Yikes, the term doesn't sound so creative. Reminds me of something to do with fixing erroneous machines) releases all or most of the tension and puts the ugly smile back in its place. Eh? So, here we are. Ugly. Smiling. And All.

Pic: Gocomics: Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson