The Trap

Home for the holidays? I am, hence the lack of posts this week--my apologies about that--but I'd like to let you know it's a trap.

Returning home for the holidays is the biggest and most obvious trap that Admiral Ackbar himself would exclaim from his captain's chair. Don't get me wrong, for the most part it can be a fun trap. You catch up with old friends and family. You don't do work (or at least try hard not to (and by try hard I mean not try at all) and yes, that was a parenthesis within a parenthesis) and you just relax. Sip down the eggnog and chug the wine or whatever it is you drink. The trap isn't so much the vacation part, its what you come back to.

It all depends on how long you have been away from home and how long you will be staying at home. It also depends on who will be in your hometown while you are visiting. All of your old friends from high school (or middle school if you were tight with folks back then like me), old crushes, old bosses, and old anyone else. When you come home, you essentially step into a time machine that brings you to some mysterious temporal crossroads where both your past and present intermingle in what could be the Michael Bay of reunions. If you're lucky however, this trip home will end up setting your Way-Back-Machine to Legendary and you'll avoid the radar jamming second Death Star that lies in wait around the damned forest moon of Endor. Not all of us are that lucky.

Emotions run high during the holiday season. Most people are running from store to store aiming to get those Christmas presents or others are baking like the 26th of December was in fact the end of the world and they just need to cook everything in the house for everyone to have the most amazing final meal ever. I'll be having tacos for dinner on Christmas thank you very much. My advice is spring the trap as early as you can in your vacation. Don't get suckered into parties you don't want to go to until after you have gone to the first one. Just make sure that first one has all of the people that are hoping to see you since if they don't make your hit list they probably won't get the chance to see you again until Easter or Thanksgiving or the Rapture (depending on how you feel about them). Remember, if they don't go for it then you're gonna have to get out of there pretty quick, so bring an exit strategy with you, whether it's your girlfriend, your best friend's girlfriend, or some other sort of friend that doesn't want to be there just as much as you.

Also, if people don't want to see you, give them the benefit of the doubt if you can. It's the holidays which means everyone is running on extra thin air and three times the caffeine. But it's up to you of course. Either way, have a happy holiday season. Merry/Happy Christmas if that's your thing, Happy Kwanza (it's real), a belated Happy Hanukkah, and whatever else I'm missing. I'll be sure to do my best to take it easy, it's only fair that you do to.

Happy Holidays from Archymedius!

Dream on.

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