Of course I know the PC attitude: welcome breather, festive spirit, friends and family, blah blah blah. The truth is though, the Dead Zone at work between Christmas and New Year's makes me antsy.
While I have slapped an official smile on my face, I am really not suited to the social chit chat, cancelled appointments, no-sense-getting-started-on-this attitude that grips every workplace from this very moment - the Friday before Christmas - for the two endless, interminable weeks until New Year's Day.
And this year we have a torturous extra weekend thrown in at the end. Just imagine.
You will think this makes me Scrooge, but you would be wrong. I like to waste excessive amounts of money on unappreciated gifts just a much as anyone else. And I enjoy a jolly drink with my colleagues too (although once the mistletoe was banned from the office party for fear of lawsuit, the whole affair did kind of lose its kick for me.) I can celebrate with the best of them.
It's just that I miss work.
I'm not sure why I still adapt so poorly to this seasonal change of pace. After all, I have spent decades working with publishers, and publishing practically invented the Dead Zone. Editors take off every Friday in the summer months, and make themselves unavailable by phone between noon and two for the whole rest of the year, in order to enjoy their lunch. (And yet they remain surprised that their industry is dying...)
I was an academic for many years as well, and academia has institutionalized the Dead Zone - three months off in the summer, plus one month at Christmas to recover from the 14 weeks of having to read student papers and exams. Necessary R and R, it's true, but dead nonetheless.
I was so trained to the pace of academia, so entrenched in its culture of pressured complaint, that when I got a hospital job I endured months of mild shock. These people seemed to work five, even six days a week, with a mere two weeks vacation a year. What's more, they expected me to do the same.
Their only relief, beside that paid vacation, was the slight easing off between Christmas and New Year's - that break welcome to so many -- for me, the Dead Zone.
We are in it officially today; I am chafing as I write, ruthlessly upping my drinking and ratcheting down my pace so as to fit in with the zeitgeist. But I have a secret strategy, a coping plan that helps chronically productive Type A's like myself endure our leisure. And I've decided to share that plan with you:
SEVEN THINGS YOU CAN DO SECRETLY TO MAKE THE ANNUAL DEAD ZONE PRODUCTIVE:
(So you can be ahead of everyone else on January 4th and they won't even know how you did it)
1. Totally prepare your next project or proposal, even though it isn't due until February and no sane person would start it 'til then. Finish it down to addressing the fed ex envelopes in which you will send it out. No sense mailing into the Dead Zone, but no other detail has to wait.
2. Clear off your desk, your to-do list, your out box. Clean out the files you've been meaning to tackle, so on January 4th everything is Perfectly Organized
3. Start your novel. Finish it. Start on the screenplay adaptation.
4. Write charming notes to everyone you've been meaning to charm, but haven't gotten around to. Don't date these notes so you can send them throughout the year. Also, buy birthday cards and get well cards to stash in your desk, so this year you win the Most Thoughtful award.
5. Write appreciative and supportive thank you notes to your staff, and, if appropriate your boss. Mean them.
6. Pretend to be shopping on line but actually up date your resume just in case.
7. If truly desperate, start your taxes.
Know how you'll feel when you are through this list? Ho Ho Ho.
