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After the Holidays…
A Formal Feeling Comes, the Nerves Sit, Ceremonious Like Tombs
The above quote is from the Emily Dickinson poem “After Great Pain.”
Were the recent holidays painful for me? Kind of, but maybe not in the ways one might be thinking. Holidays can be exhausting. They can also be fun and joyful, too, and I suppose mine were a strange mix of everything.
It’s the one time of the year, where looking at your mailbox can be fun — there are Christmas cards, packages containing gifts, and just a general sense of happiness, or at the very least, a mini-break from the mundane.
There are lights everywhere, illuminating even the darkest corners.
Decorations, candles, the scent of pine wreaths, the cooking, the cleaning, and the food — oh my goodness, the food and too much of it, really — embarrassing forays into seemingly never-ending sugar and carbohydrates that call from afar like a siren beckoning one to completely overindulge.
Which is why I rescheduled my January follow up with my primary care doctor who usually checks my A1C levels. I both want and need to very much press the “restart” button and resolve to get back on track with both exercise and my usual (mostly) healthy eating. It’s not that these things, in and of themselves, are not fun — they most definitely are, because of course this…
