Gifts

2016 was a challenging year, but it has had its positive side.
I traveled a lot.
I met new friends.
I kept in touch with old ones.

I did all of this because I went to gigs. I went to a lot of concerts, my 2016 had more concerts than months.

Going to a gig is sometimes a bit tiring: I didn't go to a single concert in Torino, which means I had to travel to some distance each time.
It requires preparation too. You learn a lot about time management when you got a finite numbers of days off you can take at work and places to go that look relatively close but requires 2 or more transfers.
Yet I get more than feeling tired and noisy ears: I returns with lots of memories and happiness, and that's what I go back to whenever I feel a bit down or moody. Yeah, life is bad enough, but Virgi remember how amazing was Astral Weeks in Vicar Street? Or Neil Young in Milano?
I returns with new music I want to share with my friends and yeah, sometimes, I added a skein or two of yarn to the luggage, cause it's a nice souvenir. So, the only good resolution I have made this year is to keep the gigs momentum going.

Yesterday the postman buzzed as I had received something that didn't fit my letterbox. I was a bit puzzled, I don't even received bills as paper mail any longer. Sometimes some funeral home leaves some uplifting letter asking to think about my future and prepare but they're not bulky.

Mmmh, I wondered, was it some Kickstarter project I backed up in the eve of the times and completely forgot about?

No! A look at the handwriting and I knew it was a real letter, from a real person, a real friend. And inside... voilà! Meeting him and becoming his friend has been the best gift, but I don't mind the book either!

Backpackitis (or fear of Monday blues)

Backpackitis is a psychological and physical state of unwellness, which hasn’t reveived the deserved amount of attention from the scientific community. Members of that community found observing chitas rewriting Shakespeare more appealing, but perhaps this is due to some unresolved trauma or painful event they suffered in the past.

It primarily hits children and youngsters during their academic years but, due to the lack of adequate treatment and vaccines, adults are subject to possible infections too.

Its symptoms normally appears on Sunday, around lunchtime: a vague feeling of sickness and prostrations starts to appear, causing a sour mood to appear.

The mood of the patient deteriorates over the afternoon; a definite sense of dread and despair sets in, once the patient eyes the backpack, normally discarded in a corner of the room, and realizes he has to go back to school the morning after and has to get the backpack ready. 

The anxiety and bad mood can be magnified and exacerbated by factors such as assignment that was supposed to be done by Monday but won't be ready till the beginning of next century, realization of meeting again the least liked teacher of the lot, having not studied for a test, missing renewal of the bus pass.

As mentioned before there are currently no vaccines or medicines that can cure the disease. Temporary solutions are provided by enjoying long and short holidays, with the side effect that the return of backpackitis will be felt even more on its resurfacing.

Yours truly was victim of it yesterday evening, while looking at her own backpack and wondering about whether or not the access password was scribbled somewhere.

I'm however happy to report that the kind and generous appliance of chat with friends and Belgian beer kept the monster at bay.