I am absolutely useless today. I seem to be suffer from pre-holiday exhaustion. This is a very vicious strain of holiday illness that some surmise is a mutation of post-holiday laziness. As this is a very dangerous affliction, I will detail the symptoms of the disease below...
1. Time stretching - this phenomenon is a common occurrence and involves the drastic slowing of time. A typical example is sitting at your computer for an excruciating period of time, checking the clock and realized a mere 3 minutes have passed. This is one of the more burdensome symptoms of pre-holiday exhaustion. This phenomenon appears to worsen in the late afternoon with the hardest period occurring between the hours of 3-5:30pm on your last full work day.
2. Procrastination - Dwelling over all the last minute details left undone and berating yourself for spending all day channel surfing instead of marking off items on your to-do list. Even though you know you have to go to the store or start cooking, you find yourself unable to rise off of the sofa and turn off the Facts of Life marathon.
3. Lack of Focus - You find yourself daydreaming out your office window or rearranging your post-it notes instead of finishing up your last report/letter. Combined with Symptom #2, a strange limbo is invoked whereby you find yourself able to only complete irrelevant tasks like ironing the napkins and unable to direct your activities to critical areas like cleaning the guest bathroom.
4. Wild Planning - In some severe cases, people infected by pre-holiday exhaustion find themselves caught up in the "perfect" holiday. After copious note taking and consulting every Martha Stewart and entertaining book in your home, you find yourself burnt out having spent two weeks and hundreds of dollars weaving your own tablecloth, dipping handmade candles and arranging hundreds of stunning table bouquets. Unable to maintain this maniacal pace without the help of twelve personal assistants, your immune systems is completely vulnerable and typically the onset of Symptoms #1-3 will occur within hours.
There is no cure for pre-holiday exhaustion that I have managed to discover. In some, shoe shopping has been know to help dull the pain but once out of the store, the symptoms return. In the interest of humanity, I will continue my quest to cure pre-holiday exhaustion. This year, I will test the theory that bubble baths may retard the onset of symptoms.
I will keep you informed of my findings.