Too scared to stop

DD asked me yesterday if I was excited about the cruise we’re about to book. Kind of, but it’s also keeping me awake at night.

As much as I love holidays, they make me nervous. I worry about the cost and I’m freaking out that it is too extravagant to book a balcony cabin.

I’ve also been retrenched twice after returning from holidays, which makes me feel a bit scared about going on them. It is not a good feeling to walk back into the office and realise people aren’t making eye contact because they know what’s about to go down.

The second time it happened my boss had been hassling me for months to go on holidays. I pushed back because I was working on a big project and it made no sense at all for me to head off in the middle of it.

But I eventually caved and booked a week or two away.

What I later realised was my boss was super eager for me to take leave so they could get me to train someone to do my job, ostensibly as holiday cover for while I was away … but really so they could take over from me when my role was made “redundant”.

I know.

I regret not going to Fair Work about it, but Gen X don’t like to make a fuss.

We’re the get-on-with-it generation.

As David Barnett writes at The Independent: “Generation X know how to work hard and we know how to play hard. Generation X-ers are very industrious. Boomers don’t understand the internet and millennials were raised on it. Generation X created it. We stripped off and dove into the glittering waters of this brand new thing, and made it what it is today.”

Ah, that’s poetry! And it makes me feel a bit more confident about being an over-55 digital worker.

“Generation X was breast-fed punk and invented indie, and grunge, and techno, and any bloody musical genre of worth that you care to name,” Barnett adds.

“We transformed the Eighties and we owned the Nineties. We had alcopops and ecstasy and we were fearless and stupid and happy, but we still got up for work on Monday morning, no matter how bad we felt …

“We don’t throw our hands in the air and say the job’s a bust, let’s give up. We know we can’t go back to mythical halcyon days and we know we can’t just rip it up and start again. We work with what we’ve got and try to make it better. We change things from the inside out.” 

Yep, Gen X rock. But we’ve also entered the mid-life crisis zone. I found myself questioning so many things as I lay in bed last night battling my latest bout of insomnia, including whether it’s crazy to keep soldiering on with HouseGoesHome (yep, that old chestnut) when just about everyone else has stopped blogging.

I also berated myself for wanting a balcony cabin, for being old and overweight, for not exercising enough, for every mistake I’ve ever made at work …

As Annie Reneau writes at Upworthy: “The “forgotten generation” has hit peak mid-life crisis time, as Gen Xers find themselves careening through their 40s and 50s. And like presumably every generation before them, they’re reeling a bit, asking, “How did I get here already?” as they pluck gray hairs out of weird places, send kids off to college and obsessively check their retirement accounts.”

And we’re tired. Well, I am.

So I really want to plan a nice holiday, but I also worry about what happens when I get back, because history tells me that no matter how hard you work it won’t save you.

Even taking half a day off last week to go to Nook X filled me with panic. There’s this irrational fear that not being there will expose that I am not worth keeping.

Crazy, I know. Holidays are good. Catastrophic thinking is bad.

I need to fix that mindset.

Song of the day: CROWDED HOUSE w DAVID BYRNE – Once In A Lifetime