Countdown to Christmas starts, but time just drags on...
Counting down the days to Christmas is like being in a state of the living dead.
Today it is 11 working days till I get in the French cage (car), now serviced and in good working order, with the ex beside me singing in the wilderness, and drive to the mountains and our children.
Seven sacred days of lying on our asses and doing boggerall are ahead of us ...
A mountain stroompie, a koppie of veggies for the vegans, a horde of horseflies and 40 degree heat, with my most important people in the world, family and friends. What more could one ask for?
But anxiety gnaws. Will the money last? Must I dig into resources? Will this one and that one get on? Will there be petty issues which sinkhole us into the underlying fractures? Will it be redeemable? Will we all just behave?
Family holidays can be raw. How tragic is it that we hanker to be free of modern slavery, otherwise known as your precious job, and then when the moment arrives, we so quickly move into the old dramas and literally squander our perfectly free, paid-for minutes.
Is the holiday like pre-paid? You buy the extra time, and then, while you are trying to enjoy it, the corporation keeps telling you they are charging you a rand a shot, no matter if you can only afford 10 bucks, then your SMS goes ballistic with their spam for tyre and death insurance, and suddenly you are told your data bundle is depleted even though you keep dialling *#@!141, probably also for a fee.
Even though you chucked 50 bucks at it in Checkers, you still owe the corporation R12, and you have 385 megabytes in credit. It can feel like we are never, ever, free. It is no wonder people get in their cars and drive out as if there is no tomorrow.
No wonder we need church, and yoga, and beer to try and rid ourselves of the endof-year bilge.
But that lies before of us: the great unknown of Christmas and how it will all pan out.
For now we are trudging through the desert of waiting. The days are ticking and turning.
But hark! The herald angels sing. Society just cannot bear this year a minute longer.
There is a Christmas party, funded by the little managers, which will help take the edge off. And there are little clever gifts to purchase, and decorations to dig out and dust off for the child who never lost her love for enchantment, there is a den to turn into a B&B, there are fun stories to fill the pages alongside the blood and morbidity.
It’s as if everyone, this entire society exhales all at once, releases this giant sigh, that says to hell with you work, it is time to rest.
In fact it time to get off your clock and move into our time.
In this shimmering summer of discontent lies a little pool of reflection. You can choose to use your precious time to fight it out, to try and settle every little score, or you can choose to exhale, to let it go, to burnish every little minute with peace and love.
If you want to cry, try and get it done early, not on the fourth day, like my old father-inlaw used to say.
Do it now so that when the holiday arrives you are on the other side. You are ready to recreate!
However you spend your free time is your private right.
Hope it is the best time spent eva. Because you earned it.