Holiday Plans

Forget the plans, just enjoy!

Do you make plans for the holidays?

I've seen people make tons of completely unrealistic plans for holidays. Even before the holidays start, there's this urge to prepare tons of food, more than all of you celebrating could possibly eat (and then there's later the pain of the food thrown away), to clean the house to the point of making it sterile, to decorate it, to buy gifts, to make plans, to... You know what I'm talking about, you've been there.

And then, for the holidays themselves, there are plans to visit all the dear people whom we don't otherwise have time to see, to finally read War and Peace and the rest of 5 million books we meant to read but didn't have time to actually do it, to watch all the series and movies and whatnot we didn't have time to watch... The holiday times, which are supposed to give us some rest, become the most stressful time, and we can't wait to get back to work, into our comfy routine, and get some true rest. Sort of.

And the holidays come. The dear people turn out not to be truly eager to see us, they have other plans (they said they would do it, but you have to hunt them with a lasso if you want to actually see them, which kind of ruins it), we don't really feel like reading or watching (we've been having too much of that for work), we don't feel like doing anything -- and then there;s this guilt for not using the holiday time for all that great stuff we don't otherwise have time for. The guilt we're wasting our time.

Except that we're not wasting it. If resting and staring at one spot or sleeping or generally doing nothing is what we need, then it's not a waste of time to do exactly that. On the contrary -- we're using the time to do what we need most, and there's no better use than that.

So, maybe I'm not going to finally finish River of Gods during holidays. Maybe I'm not going to see the third season of Misfits and all the other cool stuff I wanted to see. And I have no idea where my lasso is (oh, wait, I don't even have one). Or maybe I'm going to change my mind and watch some of it, read some of it. Either way, it's fine.

It really is.

Happy holidays!

Almost Done

Ah, the feeling of almost done. We all feel it sometimes, and I’m feeling it these days, the sweet anticipation of almost getting there, knowing I will get there, and the relief and the fulfillment of it soon to be completed.

Not so long ago, I was almost done with the reading of the Kafka’s The Castle. For some reason I don’t understand, it took me quite a while to read that book – as a matter of fact, I’ve read several other books while being troubled by that one. And then, the end of the book got near, and it felt good.

The translation of the City of Glass: almost done. The translation itself is over, actually, but there’s still work to be done, proofreading and finding the already existing translations of the quotes of Shakespeare, T. E. Lawrence, Coleridge… On a side note, it turned out that the librarian who never heard of Catullus or Milton also doesn’t know how to use the library computer properly – she told me the library had no Milton, and another librarian immediately found me Paradise Lost (that other librarian isn’t all smiles like the first one, but she knows her job, which is what I’m looking for in a librarian – I asked her for Coleridge, and she went straight to the shelf where the book was supposed to be, without looking like a puppy on a busy railway station).

As I said: the translation is almost done, and with this somewhat longish book, I cannot even begin to describe what a relief it is.

And then, there are the short story collections I’m working on. I need just a few more stories for one of them – the stories I write are very short, so that’s another thing almost done. And a good thing, at that.

I thought of doing something today – I’d certainly make a pause with the translation work, I always make it between the translation itself and the proofreading, but I thought of working on one of the books. However, it turned out I was too darn tired for it, so I’m getting some rest, drinking some green tea (the one with a beautiful golden-green color), doing some beauty rituals (everyone needs them!), and watching that pretty and interesting tree you can see on the picture.

Tree watching is always pleasant.

So, how about you? Is there something you’re almost done with right now?