Monday column: The holiday ‘hangover’ cure

Now Eid Al Adha is over, everybody looks gloomy this week. The question I have is why don’t holidays last forever?  

People go back to work this week with ‘hangovers’ hanging over their heads thinking what is the cure to restart their office routine painlessly.

There is no magic wand you could swipe in the air to make you feel better except to move on.

Talking about swiping, there were a lot of expenses we all went through during the Eid Al Adha holidays when we ‘swiped’ our bank cards for the long shopping list. The expenses were endless. At least, we can tell ourselves, while the time of relaxation is over, we are now taking a break from opening our wallets for a while.

But Eid days have their special blessings, not just an excuse not to go to work. It is also not a justification to eat a lot and do nothing. But the time for family togetherness and catch up with what we have lost during the busy working routine.

Usually, with the working stress on top us, many of us just shutout our emotions and drive ourselves inwardly forgetting the needs of the people around us. Though there were only five days of Eid holiday, including the normal weekend, hopefully most of us made every minute of it count.

But as the summer continue to hot up, some of us find another reason to get back into the holiday mood with a quick break abroad. Once more, we need to swipe our bank cards again for another expensive expedition.

But again, the cost of counting ‘baisas’ and not spending it is like building a mountain of anxiety whose peak might explode unfavorably in the long run. So we need every excuse to get away from the routine. So the question I have is this, shall we wait until the next Eid holiday to ‘chill out’ or find another excuse to take a short break?

But what I found out is that just thinking of another holiday is stressful. So how do you get yourself in a relaxing mood while we are in the same routine? The answer is simple. We do not need to buy an airline ticket or drive to a hotel on the mountains of Jabal Akdhar to feel good again.

We can take ‘mini breaks’ during the day such as looking at the sunset, a walk on the beach or simply people watching while having a hot drink in a coffee shop. It works for me all the time. It is just an excuse to put my mind in a temporary ‘daze’ to overcome the everyday stress. It is painless, cheap and most of the time, free.

I am not trying to downgrade holidays like Eid Al Adha but we can extend the mood in our daily routine by reserving ‘special time’ to be on top of the day without compromising what is important to us. So next time you look back and wish the holiday time never ends, create your own ‘fun’ time to keep you going.