Blues

My husband and I have concluded, in our own expert medical opinions, that we are depressed.  We seriously both have the post-vacation blues.  First world problems, right?  But I'm writing here because it's actually real this time.  It has never happened like this before, despite the fact that we've taken foreign trips lasting at least two weeks for at least the last decade. 


We are both in a rut right now.  I'm usually firing on all cylinders at work, very immersed in my job, staying late, fully engaged.  And I'm just not.  I'm going through the motions and getting stuff done, but it feels very mechanical and I feel distant.  It doesn't help that one of my biggest cases settled and there was a lot of horrible publicity about it (national news and People picked it up, which made my job so much fun since everyone was so pissed off; not pissed at me, because I just did my job, but I feel like I was the fall guy, since technically, I was the one who reached the deal, even though I did it with everyone's blessing).  Anyway, so my work just kind of blows lately.  I feel like I'm just doing it for the paycheck, which has never been my style.  My husband is having the same issue.  He has an official work "end time" (5:00) but for the last several years, since he's been in his current role, that has been largely meaningless.  We've both stayed at work on average until 6:30, sometimes much later.  But he's just punching the clock lately, walking out the door at 5:01, not really engaged or caring about what more he could do, just leaving it to pick back up the next day.

But even since we're home early, it's not like we're doing anything great.  It's dark so early, we don't really want to go biking (we both left work at 3:30 one day this week and were on our bikes by 4, so that was fun, but that's not a common occurrence). 


And we're not going out for drinks or fun dinners.  I desperately want to lose the weight I gained in the 6 weeks.  So being hungry much of the time certainly isn't helping my mood.  Our usual at home routine is pretty healthy.  I certainly can't eat and drink like I'm on vacation or I'd be 200 pounds in a heartbeat.  Our healthy routine is certainly good for us, but it's just not as much fun as a cheese plate and bottle of wine in a little Armenian hole in the wall in the middle of the afternoon. 


We're back into the routine of working out, but that's not exactly going well either.  First, boot camp is leaving us exceedingly sore again.  I know, it's just a matter of persisting, getting back some of the strength we lost, but it's certainly not fun to always be sore and feel like it's all just so hard.  And second, running isn't coming easily either.  The extra weight doesn't help, and my best running buddy, CW, has been traveling a lot for work lately.  There's pretty much no chance I can do the marathon in San Antonio in a couple weeks as planned.  I ran 15 miles last weekend and it was a total $hitshow.  Usually at least we have great running weather when we come back from vacation, but yesterday morning it was 71 degrees at 5 a.m.  WTH??  We've had a few cool mornings, and I actually did have a fabulous run one day last week, but in general, it's just been hard, slogging along, not really enjoying it, just going through the motions.  I'm of course happy to see my friends, but I don't even really feel like talking lately. 


We've also made half-hearted attempts at planning things with friends, but even that hasn't worked well.  Either we claim to be too tired and cancel plans (which I basically never do, I pride myself on my reliability, but that hasn't been the case in the last few weeks), or we don't even make plans because we know we just want to sit at home and do nothing except watch TV and sleep. 


I don't know what's different this year.  It's very grey outside lately, which doesn't help.  And we both were sick when we came home and only feel like we've really officially kicked the crud out in the last week or two. 


One thing we usually do that keeps us engaged and happy is to start planning our next trip.  That usually helps, but we're holding off a bit on that this year, so maybe that's bumming us out more than usual.  Next year's plan is southern Africa, but that whole "bloodless coup" in Zimbabwe has us feeling more non-committal about planning.  But hey, I heard the current administration is going to let us kill elephants for trophies if we go!  So I guess there's that?  (Just to clarify, that is definitely not the plan and is perhaps a disincentive to go...)


Maybe Thanksgiving and gearing up for Christmas will help.  I've been fairly on the ball about shopping and planning, and have even gotten started on cards, but my heart just isn't in it. 


Not looking for sympathy.  I really don't feel like I have a right to feel this way.  But I do.  And I thought writing it out might help.