A Runt’s Rant: Your Week Off

Considering that you have been working EXTRA hard in 2012, you have lately been feeling the dire need for a couple of days off.

In the end, after hours of commiserating, you finally decide to go onto the intranet and book a week off in January; not because you want, of course, but because you HAVE to.

You have to, merely because you, as all things, have the capacity to overload and implode, albeit on a psychological level. Such a demise will not be beneficial to your overall well- being, let alone your career and other aspirations.

Having booked the week off, you start pondering about the myriad of things that you will do in that time.

You will, for instance, finally have the time to grab a coffee and read ‘The Economist’; something that you have been meaning to do for awhile now.

Also, you will attend that spa resort that you have heard your colleagues talk about in their lunch break (not that you have been eavesdropping, of course).

Most importantly, you will be able to go to bed late and wake up whenever you want to without fearing the consequences.

As your week off draws near, you feel the excitement creeping up your spine (which takes some time to realise as it is quite arduous to convince yourself, under the current weather conditions, that it IS excitement as not just your spine freezing up....).

You start making a list of the things that you want to and, as you look through it, your heart races and, grinning rather nastily, your mind starts wandering- out and about.

You finally manage to fight off the excitement, go to bed and wake up on what seems to be the Friday preceding the utopian week.

As five o’clock strikes, you dash out of the office and head for your favourite pub where you have a pint or ten (out of sheer happiness, of course...)

You then decide to go out with some friends but, in a frenzy of emotions and ethanol, forget your coat at home.

‘Ah, what the Hell, it’s only a night out!’, you say to yourself.

Waking up on the following morning feels weird; almost NOT right. You feel that you do not have the physical energy to get up, let alone go to a spa.

Getting up, you feel a strange sensation in your stomach; you quickly decide that it is definitely not butterflies or excitement of your upcoming week off.

Yes, you guessed; it is the complete and utter lack of appetite.

Slowly approaching the mirror in the bathroom, you stare in disbelief in what seems to be a rather pale and lifeless face.

Droopy eyes, runny nose, nest- like hair- it is there and you can see it, you can smell it; you can FEEL it.

You are sick and you know it; so sick, indeed, that you do not have the willpower to deny the possibility that there might be something wromg.

You sit down and stare into the nothingness that is the purple wall in your bedroom.

All of your plans have just gone down the drain; and it is all your fault for leaving your coat behind.

Taking a couple of minutes to think things over, you smile to yourself; rather slyly.

‘Not ALL of my plans, though’, you say and, having made yourself a LemSip, you curl up in bed, grab the nearest to you Terry Pratchett book and start reading, knowing that whinging has never helped anyone anywhere do anything.

It is alright to whinge on a Wednesday; so long as it is productive and leads to a solution.

Having overthought the whole scenario, you fall asleep and dream of a spa- full of awesomeness.