Every winter break, I’m invariably plagued with the symptoms of having too much time and doing too little. These include becoming inexplicably unhappy. The specifics can vary from week to week or year to year, but it can be summarized into a general dissatisfaction with life. Be it the excruciating longing for the people who are not here, or the endless waiting for what is to come, the bittersweet nostalgia of what used to be, or the useless wishing for what could have been, they are all because I finally have a little time on my hands that I don’t (or want) to know what to do with. So I sit here and allow my mind to wander, and that always leads to these insidious thoughts of unhappiness.

Thoughts of escape eventually take over, and I become obsessed with the need for a fiction or a party. Being productive is always a nice option, but if seldom becomes anything more than just that, an option. So I drift between states of holiday melancholy, happy laziness, desperate escapades to bookstores and therapeutic shopping, and attempting productivity. I still love the holiday music constantly bellowing out of the speakers at the mall and the beautiful lights on the neighbors’ houses.

‘Tis the season to be, I dunno, you tell me.