Back to reality.

Nothing hurts as much as hearing your alarm go off at 5:15 on a Monday morning after you've been sleeping until 9 am every day for eleven days. My first thought was how I'd love to give my left arm for another day off, until I realized two things: 1) I really like my left arm and use it quite frequently; and 2) taking another day off will only prolong the inevitability of returning to work, and really, why put it off? I had worked myself into such a frenzy last night over going back that I gave myself a headache and didn't fall asleep until almost 11:30, even though rational me kept saying, "YOU'RE WORRYING FOR NOTHING, YOU KNOW. THIS IS SILLY. STOP IT AND GO TO SLEEP. YOU'LL PAY FOR THE LACK OF SLEEP TOMORROW AND IT WILL NOT BE PRETTY."

And yet, the irrational, worrying, anxious me, said, "BE QUIET, YOU. THERE'S PROBABLY A HUGE FIRE WAITING FOR ME WHEN I GET TO WORK, ALONG WITH 34083923 E-MAILS AND 984398493 PHONE MESSAGES. I HAVE LEGITIMATE REASONS TO BE WORRIED HERE."

So this morning, with my heart fluttering a little, I turned on my computer to discover I had about 20 e-mails, none of which were earth-shatteringly important, and two phone messages. Two. Both of which were non-urgent.

I've taken countless vacations from work, and have always come back to normalcy. Why on earth should this time have been any different in terms of emergencies, ESPECIALLY since most of the free world was off last week anyway?

The answer is: I don't know. Again. I told myself last night (as you saw) that I needed to stick to my resolution and stop making myself crazy over nothing. And I KNEW it was for nothing. And yet I still went through the needless agony.

Clearly, I still have some more work to do. I think I'll head to Amazon to see if I can find a self help book on a similar topic.

On the bright side, I had a relatively good day and I'm glad to be back in my routine again. It was nice to take a break, but it was really nice to go back to eating normal food and a regular exercise routine.

If all goes as planned, I'm hoping to take the same week off again at the end of the year.

And yes, it's already on my calendar.