Writer's Block: Holiday blues
Dec. 14th, 2009 09:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Traveling. This has been the case since I went away to college four years ago and is exponentially more stressful this year as I am now 15,000 miles away from home. Traveling isn't necessarily "emotional" in and of itself, but it definitely is stressful and can take an emotional toll.
In college, I had to pack and fly home after a week of exam stress, and my route always had a layover, making it take as long as seven or eight hours to get home. (Twelve, in the case of that obnoxious flight home my sophomore year, when I got re-routed about 1000 miles out of the way to New Jersey). Now, my journey home will take over a full day: 1.5-hour bus ride to Hagi-Iwami airport, 1-hour flight to Haneda airport in Tokyo, 1-hour shuttle ride to Narita in Tokyo, 9-hour flight to LA, 4.5-hour flight to Detroit, 0.5-hour flight to South Bend, and hour-ish drive back to my house, plus multi-hour layovers to account for customs and baggage claim since I cannot check my bags all the way through from Hagi-Iwami. The beautiful irony is that I leave early Christmas morning (about 7:00 am) and arrive late in the evening on Christmas Day (about 9:30 pm) which makes it look not that long but completely ignores the 14-hour time difference that gets eaten by my flight times. I am going to want to die by the time I reach Elkhart!
I'm in Elkhart for a few days, then I head out to LA (that's why I stop in LA in the first place instead of flying direct to Chicago or Detroit, as is possible; I wanted the round-trip ticket) and San Francisco for about a week to hang out with Robert, Tiffany, and Lisa. Flying home will be less stressful but actually take longer; though I've already covered the South Bend-Detroit-LA leg, I have to stay the night at a hostel in Tokyo because I'll have missed the once-a-day flight back to Hagi by the time I get into Tokyo around 4:45 pm. I'll then wake up at the buttcrack of dawn (not hard since I'll be jetlagged) and get myself via shuttle or train to Haneda, fly to Hagi, and finally take the bus home. All for a single day of work before a three-day weekend. Sigh.
If I stay two years, this will likely be my only trip back to the US. I'm a little sad I'm using it so quickly in the game, but I think it's really the best opportunity. I didn't have any other alternatives for travel in Asia (unless I wanted to travel alone, which, um, no thank you-- I like being alive) and I certainly wasn't going to waste the holiday sitting on my ass in my freezing apartment. While the halfway point of the summer seems the obvious choice for coming home, the summer seems more hospitable for world travel, and if I go home during the winter I can still celebrate the holidays as I'd like to, not just feeling sad or pretending they just didn't happen this year. Next year, I'll just make sure I do something really distracting and cool. If I stay a third year, I'll probably get back to the States at least one more time, however.
My feelings about Christmas have not changed very much since I was a kid. I think this is mostly because I make a huge effort to keep Christmas exactly the same. I still celebrate it at home with my family, in my childhood house with the same decorations and traditions. This will be only the third time I will not be present for the extended family gathering on Christmas Eve. Since I've gone to college, Christmas has changed a bit-- I'm not always home to decorate the tree, the extended family gatherings halved from second cousins to just cousins, and last year Grama couldn't make it at all-- but within the next five to ten years I imagine it will become nearly unrecognizable as Tory and Neil also leave the family home and I make permanent residence and start my own family. New Christmas traditions will need to begin in my new place with the new people in my life, perhaps in tandem with my grandparents no longer being willing or able to host the traditional family Christmas Eve gathering. Plus, my immediate family will likely remain spread out as we are now; unlike my childhood where EVERYONE lived in South Bend (we were the weird inconvenient family all the way out in Elkhart), I imagine we're going to have to make long overnight trips to see each other. I think the days of not having to travel for Christmas are effectively over, unless I end up being the one hosting the Christmas celebrations. (Which I might actually be cool with, provided it didn't involve TOO many people and everyone was willing to bring food and accept a certain level of casualness).
This weird limbo where I'm no longer really the child of a nuclear family but not yet the parent of my own is hard to navigate. Even being a parent may not change my holiday travel plans, however, since I know so many still travel with young children to the home of their parents for the holidays. When does Christmas change from me going home as a kid to my parents coming to visit me as grandparents? (Lol, knowing my mom and her dislike of hosting things-- though would this apply to her kids?-- probably pretty quickly :-P). It will probably come down to centrality of location and suitability of house for hosting overnight guests, though, come to think of it. *Shrug.*
Traveling. This has been the case since I went away to college four years ago and is exponentially more stressful this year as I am now 15,000 miles away from home. Traveling isn't necessarily "emotional" in and of itself, but it definitely is stressful and can take an emotional toll.
In college, I had to pack and fly home after a week of exam stress, and my route always had a layover, making it take as long as seven or eight hours to get home. (Twelve, in the case of that obnoxious flight home my sophomore year, when I got re-routed about 1000 miles out of the way to New Jersey). Now, my journey home will take over a full day: 1.5-hour bus ride to Hagi-Iwami airport, 1-hour flight to Haneda airport in Tokyo, 1-hour shuttle ride to Narita in Tokyo, 9-hour flight to LA, 4.5-hour flight to Detroit, 0.5-hour flight to South Bend, and hour-ish drive back to my house, plus multi-hour layovers to account for customs and baggage claim since I cannot check my bags all the way through from Hagi-Iwami. The beautiful irony is that I leave early Christmas morning (about 7:00 am) and arrive late in the evening on Christmas Day (about 9:30 pm) which makes it look not that long but completely ignores the 14-hour time difference that gets eaten by my flight times. I am going to want to die by the time I reach Elkhart!
I'm in Elkhart for a few days, then I head out to LA (that's why I stop in LA in the first place instead of flying direct to Chicago or Detroit, as is possible; I wanted the round-trip ticket) and San Francisco for about a week to hang out with Robert, Tiffany, and Lisa. Flying home will be less stressful but actually take longer; though I've already covered the South Bend-Detroit-LA leg, I have to stay the night at a hostel in Tokyo because I'll have missed the once-a-day flight back to Hagi by the time I get into Tokyo around 4:45 pm. I'll then wake up at the buttcrack of dawn (not hard since I'll be jetlagged) and get myself via shuttle or train to Haneda, fly to Hagi, and finally take the bus home. All for a single day of work before a three-day weekend. Sigh.
If I stay two years, this will likely be my only trip back to the US. I'm a little sad I'm using it so quickly in the game, but I think it's really the best opportunity. I didn't have any other alternatives for travel in Asia (unless I wanted to travel alone, which, um, no thank you-- I like being alive) and I certainly wasn't going to waste the holiday sitting on my ass in my freezing apartment. While the halfway point of the summer seems the obvious choice for coming home, the summer seems more hospitable for world travel, and if I go home during the winter I can still celebrate the holidays as I'd like to, not just feeling sad or pretending they just didn't happen this year. Next year, I'll just make sure I do something really distracting and cool. If I stay a third year, I'll probably get back to the States at least one more time, however.
My feelings about Christmas have not changed very much since I was a kid. I think this is mostly because I make a huge effort to keep Christmas exactly the same. I still celebrate it at home with my family, in my childhood house with the same decorations and traditions. This will be only the third time I will not be present for the extended family gathering on Christmas Eve. Since I've gone to college, Christmas has changed a bit-- I'm not always home to decorate the tree, the extended family gatherings halved from second cousins to just cousins, and last year Grama couldn't make it at all-- but within the next five to ten years I imagine it will become nearly unrecognizable as Tory and Neil also leave the family home and I make permanent residence and start my own family. New Christmas traditions will need to begin in my new place with the new people in my life, perhaps in tandem with my grandparents no longer being willing or able to host the traditional family Christmas Eve gathering. Plus, my immediate family will likely remain spread out as we are now; unlike my childhood where EVERYONE lived in South Bend (we were the weird inconvenient family all the way out in Elkhart), I imagine we're going to have to make long overnight trips to see each other. I think the days of not having to travel for Christmas are effectively over, unless I end up being the one hosting the Christmas celebrations. (Which I might actually be cool with, provided it didn't involve TOO many people and everyone was willing to bring food and accept a certain level of casualness).
This weird limbo where I'm no longer really the child of a nuclear family but not yet the parent of my own is hard to navigate. Even being a parent may not change my holiday travel plans, however, since I know so many still travel with young children to the home of their parents for the holidays. When does Christmas change from me going home as a kid to my parents coming to visit me as grandparents? (Lol, knowing my mom and her dislike of hosting things-- though would this apply to her kids?-- probably pretty quickly :-P). It will probably come down to centrality of location and suitability of house for hosting overnight guests, though, come to think of it. *Shrug.*
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no subject
Date: 2009-12-14 02:56 pm (UTC)Sadly, my holiday experience has changed since I moved out here. People seem more stressed out and impatient with me and I was only gone for a couple months, this didn't happen while I was out in NYC....o well.
I'm always glad to be around my loved one during the holidays but part of me also always hopes it'll be a bit of a warm and comforting time capsule I can rely on.
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Date: 2009-12-15 09:44 pm (UTC)The longest I've done was Ho Chi Minh City to Taipei to LAX to (I don't remember if we had to go to NY next) Baltimore. On the way out I remember we did Baltimore to NY to Seattle to Taipei to Ho Chi Minh City. I also had a horrible allergic reaction to the airplane food, which was not fun times.