The Ethnophenomenology of Unhappiness

I am back at work on a Tuesday, two days after returning from a week-long vacation to the Caribbean with my man-friend, Jim. We spent the week in 88-degree weather, where the sun was shining, the food was impeccable, and the 'no problem' attitude of the locals put an extra bounce in my previously tripped-up step. We laid by the pool, sat dangling our feet over private docks in the bay, drank frozen girly drinks, and slept. It was perfection.

Now I am back in the trenches of Chicago after immediately dropping Jim off at the airport to fly back to England. I go home, to a cold apartment, and sit by myself, as it were before I left. The only solace was having Murray to cuddle, but that quickly subsided when my allergies went into full self-attack mode since I'd been away for so long. It was misery.

I woke up Monday morning overly tired from the previous 20-hour day, and dragged myself around the apartment collecting items for my work day. I walk out into the 40-degree Chicago weather, battling the strong winds on my way to the train. My skin, which had healed and softened significantly in the Caribbean sun and sea water, had already started to chafe and redden yet again.

I walk through the pedway on the way to the office, and not one single face is smiling. No one is in a good mood, no one is being courteous or holding any doors or thanking anyone for holding any doors. A Chicagoan's bitterness is wrapping a cold blanket around me! I get to my office, walk into reception the made no room for windows, into an office with no windows, sitting and facing a gray, undecorated wall for the next 9 hours while my boss barks at me to get out of vacation mode and get back into work mode.

Alas.

There is that saying that you need a vacation from a vacation, and I take that to heart today. There was not much transition from sitting in happiness with the man of my dreams, and then literally the next day being thrust into a cold gray city with no mans. It doesn't help that work conditions are dreary and depressing as well, in accordance with the high expectations of performance but without payoff or self-fulfillment.


The British call this the "post-holiday blues." I call this 'the ethnophenomenology of unhappiness.' We seem to have gone numb to depressing work and living conditions because we either have to or because it's what we know. I feel like there needs to be a paradigm shift here, because people shouldn't feel this way. Some of these are [relatively] innocuous phrases used to present extreme anguish...because everyone feels this way. Reaching into the lion's mouth, I wonder if taking a break from 'reality' actually opens our eyes to what life should be like, rather than a simple acceptance of brief happiness.

I guess one will never know. And I leave this chalked up to a question as my boss could potentially read this, and his answer would be to take away vacation days so we won't have to feel this way.

Let the tightening of the chains begin.