This is it! The last day of summer holidays for so many people across the country. Even those who took their month in July will probably feel a bit of dismay because August is a month when little serious work usually takes place – since half the country is still on holiday!
But now, things are different. It’s back to work and back to life. It’s time to pay the bills, face the charges made during the summer holidays, get the house organised, stock the pantry and get ready to send the kids back to school.
It’s time for “post holiday blues”. This is a big topic in the press every year around this time as psychologists make their statements and journalists pull up every report available on the subject. And we always reach the same conclusion: it’s tough to go back to work.
Especially if you don’t like your job, but sometimes even if you do.
Summer, after all, is a sort of return to childhood for many. Long days on the beach are followed by late nights on terrace or in a favourite sidewalk café. Once again, time is in such surplus you take it completely for granted. You achieve what the Spanish call “total disconnection” with reality, with life, with everything, and you just live – just like you did when you were a kid.
So, life post vacation is a bit like having to grow up again and be responsible, thus the post holiday blues.
But what about all those parents who say they can’t wait for summer to end just to get the kids back in school?
Well, perhaps that is what is known as mixed feelings – “sentimientos encontrados” in Spanish.