Frowny face

I’m off on holiday tomorrow, spending seven nights in Tenerife, where it is apparently only six or seven degrees hotter than it is here in merry of England, but more importantly is a long, long, long way from work.

Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy my job. But I work on the internet, and spend a lot of time pottering about on it at home too (the presence of these very words being evidence of this), and so it’s hard to stop thinking about work. Exciting new trends on-line just get me thinking about how I can apply them in the office.

So it’s hard to shut off, and let go of the general frustrations that everyone feels about their job.

I spent a week in Italy last autumn, and spent much of the time pottering about around Lake Como, reading and relaxing. It was top. However, my demeanor was an unexpected concern for my girlfriend, for whom I was suddenly unreadable. Apparently I spend so much time with my facial features creased into an expression of frown of distraction or frustration that my docile dial was completely unfamiliar. Like if Santa suddenly shaved off his beard.

In short: I spend so much time with something on my mind, that when I’ve managed to empty it of all but the flight path of a butterfly across a lake, I’ve forgotten what to do with my face. So I just shut down. There’s no blissful look of contentment; no idyllic smile of relaxed satisfaction, there’s nothing.

On the plus side, this lack of facial exertion may well stave off the onset of wrinkles for a few extra years. However the drawback is that my smooth and uncreased visage will have all the friendliness and warmth of a cyberman. And they’re crap on holidays. The sea water makes them rust for one thing.

The frustrating thing is that I’m not trying to convey anything more complicated than serenity. It’s one of the most scant emotions – an absence, in fact, of any destructive or troubling thoughts that in themselves might prove difficult to render facially.

Likewise, I’m not trying to specifically illustrate whatever whimsical nonsense is currently scrambling through my mind. In most instances, I’ll be trying to lose myself by focusing on tiny, otherwise unnoticable elements of the environment around me that quite frankly, aren’t worth bringing to the attention of those in my company.

Otherwise I’ll be testing quite how far an uninetrrupted train of thought can go and any errant external transmission of a current idea will invariably just end with a lengthy conversation on why the hell I’m thinking about hurling geese off the roof of a hospital.

So this holiday I shall be making a concerted effort to look relaxed, a task that I will undoubtedly find impossile to ignore, and instead will end up spending the week with a furrowed look of frustrated focus plasted across my brow.

Much as I do the other 51 weeks of the year.