The After-Christmas-Depression

Zero Motivation for Work

The first day after christmas I had to go to work wasn't easy. Already in the morning when my alarm started to tell me that it was time to get up I didn't feel any motivation. I was just tired and every single part of myself was crying for more holidays. Even if it had almost been two weeks it felt like nothing - the reason for that was mainly that I had gone to Germany, lost two days with travelling, and hadn't had any time to relax and let my thoughts be free. I always had to think about who to meet, where to go and what to do during the eight days of my stay. After my arrival back to Tenerife I had only had one day to relax and I had spent it with my friend and her boyfriend walking around and showing them Puerto de la Cruz - so fully calculated I had had one single day off, which was the day before my flight to Germany when I had gone to the beach with the Vietnamese girl. But it was too long ago to help me with any relaxation or something. 

So in the morning I forced myself to get up and have a short breakfast. The weather was great and it had started to become bright outside earlier, so at least something was good that day. I prepared myself and my bag and had some time left before I had to leave. I always hurried up so much and in the end I was ready 20 minutes too early, but when I tried to set my alarm later I was always afraid to be too late. So I went back to my bed and tried to relax and not to think about work for some more minutes. Just to make you understand - the problem for me about work wasn't to get up "early" (if you can call 7:30 early) or to go there, or that I would be too lazy for that. The problem was that it was unpaid and that the other intern and I were sitting there for 9 hours a day doing nothing. Really nothing. There were some tasks every month we had to do, and some meetings we had to attend, but that was it. No special tasks (usually), no exigent things to do, no challenges. In the beginning everything had been challenging and new and interesting, but after only 2 months that phase had stopped and now it was simply boring. The worst time had been the weeks before christmas when we had really nothing to do, not even some boring tasks. I would have preferred some stress instead of sitting there and watching videos of cute cats and baby animals. 

I finally left the house and started my 25 minutes way to work - it was a terrible way every morning: first, I had to get up about 100 steps, then a quite steep hill and in the end I had to walk slightly upwards for about 15 more minutes. Considering the temperature I was incredibly happy that there was no dress code in my company and we could wear whatever we wanted to. I arrived in the office and everything was as before; I couldn't even tell what I would have expected to change. I made some tea and brought my lunch to the fridge that I had prepared the evening before. Then, I went back to my desk and started my computer in order to see if there was any important email (knowing already that there wasn't). Five minutes later the Vietnamese girl arrived and we started to talk about our Christmas holidays. When we had finished (or stopped) talking about that - even if we had nothing to do we had to pretend to work anyway, she updated me about some things that they had been talking about the day before when I had still been away. There were some small changes but nothing important that would have shifted everything. As some of the other people in the office were still away, there was even less to do for us. Our project manager put some pressure on us because of a new client he had and told us to do some research, but the topic was incredibly boring and we didn't know anything about it so we decided to finish some other tasks quickly and do the research together afterwards. 

That's how the first week after Christmas holidays passed by - going to work with zero motivation, sitting there, wasting time, watching funny or cute videos and doing some small tasks, going home, doing some sports, watching TV, cooking and going to bed. The routine made time pass by even slower and our project manager started to be even more annoying than before the christmas holidays. He gave us tasks without any sense, put a lot of pressure on us and didn't know what his task was about himself. We were almost all the time complaining about him in our private chat and started to boycott some of his silly tasks - something that put at least some motivation into our daily working life. We weren't even doing all our breaks during the day because it had become boring to watch the cars passing by on the large street in front of the building and we didn't need any break to talk about our lifes because we already had all the time we pretended to work. The Wednesday in the first week was a national holiday - the real Christmas in Spain when all the children received their presents, so fortunately we didn't have to work then. For me it was only a 3-day-week, but I wasn't quite motivated for the following three weeks anyway and hoped that they would pass by quickly. At least I had one thing to look forward to: for the weekend we had planned to go to Santa Cruz, the capital, as the Sales in Tenerife had already begun and we wanted to spend some time with shopping. 

Sales in Spain - Shopping without Limits

Because of our depressing daily working life we needed some distraction and went to Santa Cruz to see if the Sales were really as good as the others had told us. It was a relaxing Girls-Day and I was a bit happy that the others had not wanted to come with us - I didn't want to have that much stress at the weekend and it was always exhausting when we were more than two people, because everyone wanted to do something else, to go somewhere else and to leave at another time. With the Vietnamese girl everything was relaxing, usually we agreed on everything and we understood the needs of the other person. 

So we started our way to Santa Cruz around lunch time by bus. The bus ride took about half an hour and when we arrived we were hungry and wanted to have something to eat first. We had left the bus next to the large shopping centre, so we went there to have something to eat at a Venezuelan restaurant - the traditional food there is called "Arepas" and it's incredibly delicious! It's a fried corn sandwich filled with things like pulled pork, cheese, ham or fish. It's very filling and I imagine that it might have a lot of calories, but it tastes sooo good. So we had lunch there, and afterwards we had problems to move because we were so full. We stayed a bit out there in the sunshine at the roof of the shopping centre before we finally started our shopping trip. 

I didn't want to buy a lot in fact, because the trip to Germany had already been quite expensive and I didn't want to spend so much money on things as I wasn't sure if I could even take them home with me because of the limited luggage. The Vietnamese girl was a bit more motivated regarding buying things, so I decided to follow her wherever she wanted to go and if there would be anything I liked I could buy it, if not it was okay as well. As she was mainly focused on make-up and other beauty products, the first part of the shopping consisted of me watching her trying lipsticks or similar things. But I didn't have a problem with that, I enjoyed telling her what looked good and what didn't look so good. We continued our shopping trip and went to clothing store like Mango, Zara or Primark, but as I didn't look for anything, I didn't buy anything. My friend bought some things, and after two hours we had a short break in on of the chill-out lounges of the shopping centre.

After our break we still had a lot of time until the evening, so we decided to leave that shopping centre and walk the ten minutes to another large shopping centre, the "Corte Inglès". It's a very tall building with nine floors and you can find almost everything there - clothing, beauty products, fragrances, furniture and even books, games and electronic devices. Unfortunately, the products there are quite expensive because you only have big quality brands. But if you are looking for something special that you don't find anywhere else that might be the right place to find it. We walked through the different floors and I found some interesting products, but as they were incredible expensive I didn't buy them. We had a lot of fun finding all those weird and pracitcal things you think you need, but in the end you can live without them very well. Soon we were tired and planned to return to Puerto de la Cruz - even if I hadn't wanted to buy anything I had found some cheap offers and was happy about my new things. We went to the bus stop and waited for the bus while the sun started to set slowly and warmed our faces for the last minutes of the day. It had been a wonderful Girls-Day and I had really forgotten about the boring time at work and the feeling to waste my time. But the day after tomorrow I would have to return there - the only thing that rose my motivation a bit was the fact that the other girl had to come, too. Even if I hadn't liked her that much in the beginning we had really become good friends and I liked her from day to day more. We had almost the same attitudes, were laughing about the same things and liked things like cute animals and the same tv series.  

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