Assorted Break Thoughts

 Since it seems to be the general theme of every conversation I’ve had the last couple days, lets talk spring break. Before I get into how awesome New Orleans was, let me start with a mistake. I decided that I would make this break a proper holiday and go off the grid outside of the occasion text. No checking my (many) emails, no facebook (not that I check it often anyway), etc. In theory, that was a lovely idea. In practice? I have an actual metric ton of stuff to catch up on. I’m notoriously that person that is reachable at all hours and is just as likely to send a work email at 3am as 3pm, so this kind of backlog is very new to me. The extent that I’m glued to my phone probably isn’t the healthiest, but it is what it is. So stepping away from that for almost a week? Insanity. I had hundreds of actual relevant notifications to sort through, and I still haven’t caught back up. That’s one of my goals for this week—wish me luck.   

Relatedly, spring break was fantastic. New Orleans was beautiful and the food was incredible and I already miss it. Flying was a little rougher than I had expected it to be—I’ve flown a lot in the past but for various reasons this trip was a little worse, but a nice 14 hours of sleep upon getting back to Boston solved that fairly well. I genuinely could gush about New Orleans for the rest of this, but I wasn’t kidding when I said I already miss it and the reminder of how cold it is outside now that I’m back at NEU might just make me cry. So let’s change the subject just slightly.   

I went on break with a group of friends—eight of us in total. I originally had concerns about how many of us there were, but it turned out to be a great group size as we could easily split into two or three smaller groups depending upon what people wanted to do, which was ultimately something of a blessing. However, eight people is a large number. Additionally, at no point was I (or were any of us, for than matter) alone for the entire vacation. As much as I enjoy the company of my friends—and generally consider myself more of a “people person” than not—that was peculiarly overwhelming. Perhaps I’ve just gotten used to my alone time these days, but toward the end of the trip all I could think about was being alone in my room and locking the door. While I’ve desired to be alone in the past, I’ve never felt quite like I did at the end of this trip. One of my friends mentioned feeling something similar, and called it being overstimulated, which isn’t quite right but I supposed is the closest I’ll get. Let me know if that’s relatable to any of you, or if I’m just finally turning into a recluse.