Return to Complexcity

It has been something of a struggle to reacclimatise to London life. I’ve never really had Post Holiday Syndrome before, but I did this time. It’s that flustered trance in which you walk around for a week while trying to get your head around a) the 1003 emails in your inbox, b) the leftover stuff from your last project, c)  the logistics of the new project, as well as d) all the logistical life stuff: exercise, commuting, washing, shopping, rent, bills, contracts, fees, ironing, filing, shredding and cleaning.

Life is bewilderingly, almost depressingly complex, especially in a megacity. A large part of me wants to pull the duvet over my head and opt out for a few more days or  weeks.

I have tried to make the transition back to my usual life as gradual as possible, to make it less shocking, less jarring, but it’s still a bumpy ride. I guess the problem is that while I was travelling, my world shrank to the present, as it does on the road, even as my horizons expanded, as they do when you experience new places and things.

Is this where the iLife falls down? Because it must bring all the complexity of modern urban life with it – even if it’s all online, all virtual. You still have to worry about, exercise, commuting, washing, shopping, rent, bills, contracts, fees, ironing, firewalls, encryption and cleaning. Granted, if you take it to the extreme of living in a hotel, you can lose cleaning – and probably washing, ironing and shopping from that list, but it creates more in the way of rent and fees. Simpler in concept, but not necessarily simpler in execution (depending on how many different people you end up paying and how long between hotel bills).

I have been researching ways to ease back in:  taking my lunch break outside the building, not staying later than necessary, prioritising and saying no. But the trouble with easing back in is that you still end up back in the thick of it. And I don’t want that. I’d like to try to keep some small semblance of the simplicity of my life on the road in my normal day-to-day. I’d like to find a way to stay waist-deep at most in the swirling currents of hectic city life, not be swept again out of my depth.