The Post-Vacation Hangover

It happens to all of us. It's happening to me as I type.

Vacations are awesome. You get to drop all of the baggage of your daily life, and travel somewhere fun. Maybe it's a new and exotic locale, or perhaps it's a familiar place where friends and/or family dwell. Either way, you get to go and breathe the free air of zero responsibility. No hassles, no stress, just good food, drinks, and people.

And then it's over, and you have to return to swampy muck that is Real Life. And that's always difficult. At least, it is for me.

I spent the last week in Anchorage, my old stomping grounds. One of my oldest and best friends was getting married to a wonderful woman, and I had the honor of being the Best Man. Having never been a best man before, I was naturally nervous, but also excited. Anchorage was experiencing an anomaly in the form of sunny skies and hot weather; the entire trip, the temperature didn't drop below 70 degrees.

I'll skip past the detailed description of what I did and with whom while I was there; that's not the purpose of this blog post. I will say this: I spent an amazing week with a lot of good friends. We hung out, ate delicious food, saw some movies, and just shot the shit. I even made some new friends along the way. Oh, and there was that wedding I mentioned earlier. That event deserves it's own post...

Anywho, when it's all said and done, I had a great time. And then I flew back to Seattle, and was greeted with an uncomfortable hug and a sloppy kiss by Real Life. Who, by the way, uses *way* too much tongue.

Now, I can handle most of the tedium of every day life; going to work, paying bills, and bitching about the fantastic Seattle weather just comes with the territory. Everyone has to deal with that vexing minutiae. But the one thing that causes me distress is that, once again, I'm without friends I can see on a regular basis. And that sucks. Badly.

I think the greatest aspect of my trip was having friends I could hang with; it's been more than a year since I was graced with a social life. While I don't think much of Anchorage as a place to live, I cannot deny how much joy it brought me to return for a week. And the source of that joy was, of course, the people who live there.

Now that I'm back, it's quickly sinking into my beautiful bald head that I lack a social life. I've always been something of an introvert; I much prefer reading a good book to going out and partying. Still, even a pseudo-misanthropic fellow such as myself wants, nay, needs, a social circle.

This ever-present solitude is a poisonous thing. It sinks its fangs into you, and forces upon you a stinking miasma of negativity, melancholy, and ennui. It destroys your self esteem, and acts as a blight upon your mental health. I know this because I have experienced it time and again for that past year and a half; through strength of will I manage to shake it off for a time, but like a cloud of blood-sucking mosquitoes, it pursues, desperately trying to drain the life out of you.

So here I sit. Pondering a solution for this ever present conundrum.