Back to the daily grind this week, with a hell of a hangover. It’s not just the excessive eating and drinking of things not normally consumed. We also overindulge in leisure, and, if we’re really lucky, surround ourselves with an abundance of love.

And on the morning after, we return to the cold hard workplace, where people expect us to be responsible and to achieve things, and they don’t even reward us with hugs. (I miss you, Mom!)

I dragged myself out of bed Monday at a decent time and planted myself in front of GMA (Good Morning America for those of you not obsessed with keeping up on what regular Americans think of as news). I learned that Sam Champion (the weather guy) was on a recent episode of Extreme Makeover Home Edition (with Muppets?) and my mind wandered… what a cute couple Sam Champion and Ty Pennington would be. What if they’re secretly dating? I mean, Sam is out but I think Ty is still closeted. They are both in really great shape. They would probably have such adventurous vacations, like hiking through the Andes, ooh I want an Andes mint… This meandering meant I missed the two minutes of actual news, which is probably good because it looked kind of depressing. I also missed my window of opportunity to make it to the gym before having to get ready for work, and so my first real waking emotion of the day was a mixture of guilt and regret. That’s when the headache started.

The cottonmouth didn’t kick in until I was halfway to work. My mental conversation started productively enough “Am I on track to reach my goals?” and quickly deteriorated to “Do I even have personal career goals anymore, or am I just serving the goals of my employer?” Second emotional wave of the day: self-doubt + defiant irritation.

Got to work and realized I had two meetings which I was not at all prepared for. (Emotional wave #3: frustration and distant panic). After sketching a rough To Do list (#4: overwhelmed, accompanied by a sense of forgetfulness that is perhaps best described as the antithesis of deja vu), I pushed past the nausea straight to cravings for greasy food. Afternoon came with more meeting requests and reminders of upcoming projects that will take too much of my time, adding trepidation (#5) to the trash heap of negative emotions I compiled throughout the day.

I went straight to the gym in hopes that the productivity and physical exertion would help me overpower my grumpiness and release the toxins. So here’s hoping a good night’s sleep and an evening that ended in Ghirardelli hot chocolate will make for an easier Day 2.