Somehow the holidays were too much downtime for me
By Matthew Fraser, Editor in Chief
Those glorious authorly walks were barred to me by my current boots being on death’s door and a light freeze. So as a result, I wanted to work.
I am by no means a workaholic. In fact, I’m a late riser and disgustingly lazy all too often. More mornings than not, wild horses couldn’t drag me out of bed. Yet someway, somehow, a week or two into holiday downtime I was itching to get back to work.
The weirdest thing is how strangely irrational I understand that desire to be. More than irrational, it was deeply un-Matthew to itch to run around doing all of the somethings that clutter my schedule.
In hindsight (that fabulous perfect vision that only shows up to illuminate your mistakes) I think I was just bored out of my mind sitting in my house. I watched some stuff on YouTube, discovered like a million things I want to buy but don’t have the money for, fantasized about all the cool little apartments that other people live in, and listened to music. The two days before Christmas saw me chain watching the Ringu series on my way to a sprint through Japanese horror history. But through all of that next to nothing, day by day squalor, I wished I could get back to work.
Maybe it’s a strange creature habit, like how pets get random bursts of energy and sprint around seemingly uncontrollably. It’s like there is a minimum level of outside and moving that must be fulfilled or else you’ll be itching for that fresh air that your missing.
It must have been the snow. I couldn’t get out and walk because the cold makes me miserable and Canada Post hates me and the boots they were supposed to deliver in November. (How the hell does a package shipped from Surrey get stuck in Richmond for like two months on its way to Burnaby??) Those glorious authorly walks were barred to me by my current boots being on death’s door and a light freeze. So as a result, I wanted to work. Something to drag me out of bed and give my day a little purpose. Something to move my hindquarters from in front of my screen and into the outdoors.
I couldn’t even go to the gym because Dr. Bonnie Henry hates it when people sweat. That must be it; she doesn’t like when exertion causes perspiration and so she bans the activities that lead that way at the first opportunity. Never mind the perpetual pandemic, I can no longer care about such trivialities.
Well, for better or for worse, I have things to do again. Now I can start the countdown until the days when I want the holidays to start so that I can go back to doing nothing again.
