All That and Then Some

ALICE - Blue Monday

THE WAY I SEE it, I have six days of freedom remaining before my ankle gets re-clamped in the trap of corporate servitude. Well, five, if I don't count Christmas Day. Four, if I don't count Christmas Eve either because we always have a big Christmas Eve party, and I'll spend that entire day cooking, cleaning and trying not to drink all the mulled wine before the guests arrive. Three, if we don't count today which is already half over.

That means, in reality, I have two days of freedom left. 48 hours. Minus sleeping time, of course, so now we're down to, what, 30 hours?

I have 30 hours of freedom left.

That's barely more than a day! I feel my throat constrict and my underarms prickle with anxious sweat. What can I realistically get done in a day? I think of the hundreds of things I've been putting off, blithely believing I would one day get around to doing them because I was my own boss and every hour of every day was mine to use as I wished.

To organize my dread, I spend precious time typing up a to-do-before-life-goes-back-to-sucking list which includes everything from finally booking that pap smear I've been putting off to clearing out the kitchen junk drawer and getting the dog's teeth cleaned. Once I've compiled my long list (this takes almost a full hour <29!>)I print it off (another full hour because I have to change the printer's ink cartridge and that, you'll know if you've ever tried it, is a hellish, time-suck of a proposition <28!!>) and then tape it to the refrigerator door and attempt to prioritize the list into URGENT, SEMI-URGENT and LESS URGENT using some emoji stickers usually reserved for Tim's chore chart. Stars for urgent, barf faces for semi-urgent, smiley poop for less urgent.

Or should they be the other way around? Poop for urgent? Stars for less urgent?

Argh. Now I'll have to start all over!

As I stand in front of the fridge, trying to peel poop emoji stickers off my to-do chart, I realize the words on the page are all swimming together. My breath starts to skitter in my chest, and I recognize the onset of a classic "Sunday dreads" anxiety attack. The literal physical manifestation of my fear. The very thing I'd been running from when I quit that high-paying job five years ago and opened my own small-time neighbourhood coffee shop.

I glance nervously at the clock. I can't waste another precious hour of freedom having a panic attack. There's no time to waste on emotional incontinence, I chastise myself. I try to put Corporate Alice in charge of the situation, but even her no-nonsense pep-talk — suck it up buttercup, you can't lie down with dogs and not get a few fleas, time to take one for the team, hoorah! — can't stop the freight train sized freak out that's bearing down on me.

I'm not ready to go back to work.

The truth is, I'll never be ready.

This was a terrible idea.

I gasp for a steadying breath.

My phone pings and it's Joss, confirming I've received the travel itinerary from his private jet company. He reminds me to pack a bathing suit.

Ugh. Another attempt at a steadying breath.

Phone pings again. Eloise, the PR woman, reporting that both Wired and SPIN magazine have retweeted #pukeit #AliMac #CarvilFoods and that we are "totally breaking the internet."

Oh god. Steadying breath.

Phone pings again. Joss' gorgeous sister this time, Justine Carvil. She wonders if we could meet briefly before the retreat. Just to 'get to know each other' better. Maybe a working dinner?