No matter how much you love your job and the people you work with, coming back to work is so difficult. Up to now the past two weeks has involved nothing more taxing than deciding between a mojito or long island iced tea and apart from the big question ‘does my bum look big in this beach?’ that’s as tough as it gets.
The traumatic late nights, spent sorting and compressing many weeks worth of work so that everything that can possibly be completed – is completed before you go away. This is supported by laboriously considered and over thought handover notes with contingency plans covering earthquakes, plague and flood so if you didn’t really need a holiday – preparing for one ensures that you will.
Luckily all is forgotten as you sniff the first cocoa-nutty tang of sun cream and open the first page of THAT book, but returning to a long list of unread emails (yep, that’s right – I don’t look at my phone; because being detached means you are only able to half deal with emails which doesn’t help anyone and the elves back at Thomas Miller are more than capable ) is one thing; but it’s the not being in control at all times, that bugs me most.
I like to know everything ( yeah yeah I KNOW!) . It pleases me to know why clients arrive at a brief, what prompted them, what mood they were in when they created it, what colour socks they were wearing and if they were drinking tea… so following the email trails and seeing how things have been dealt with while I’ve been away is really traumatic… until I find out it all ends happily – as it invariably does – it almost physically hurts.
The urban dictionary describes Post Holiday Depression (PHD) as: General feeling of sadness and depression and hatred of all things work-related soon after a long holiday. Symptoms usually show at least 4 hours into the first work day after a holiday and can linger for up to a year until the next festive season.
No known deaths have been recorded due to PHD, but severe cases of sighing, biscuit tin abuse and silent crying have been noted.
I’ve been back a week now and I’m now covering a colleague’s holiday. It’s all under control though pretty busy and it’s going to be even harder to hand back to them when they return… boy will I need a holiday.