How to survive the post-holiday blues (without compulsively booking another trip)

A Monday in early September.

The suitcase is already unpacked, the beach feels like a distant memory and your phone is filling up with notifications again.

Three days ago, your biggest concern was finding a table for dinner and now you have 147 unread emails.

And you feel… not great.

Tired, unmotivated and wondering why anyone ever decided September was a good month to start things.

Relax: finding it hard to come back from holiday does not necessarily mean you have chosen the wrong life.

The so-called post-holiday blues usually appear for exactly that reason: after a few days living at a different pace, you have to readjust to schedules, obligations and routines.

The good news is that, in most cases, it is temporary.

The problem is not the holiday: it is the contrast

During the holidays, almost all the rules that organise our days change.

We sleep and eat at different times, we have more control over our time, we have fewer obligations and we do more things simply because we feel like it.

And then we come back.

Alarm clock.

Emails.

Meetings.

Shopping.

Laundry.

Schools.

Traffic.

That Excel file that somehow survived perfectly without you for three weeks and now urgently needs you again.

The greater the distance between your holiday life and your everyday life, the more noticeable the landing.

That is why, although we often talk about “post-holiday depression”, we are not necessarily talking about clinical depression.

Experts tend to describe it more as an adaptive response to a sudden change of pace, and it usually improves as we recover our schedules and routines.

That does not mean it should be dismissed.

If the discomfort lasts, gets worse or significantly interferes with your daily life, it is best to speak to a professional.

But if you have simply spent two days staring out of the office window thinking that at this time last week you were ordering another mojito, you probably just need a little time.

Before buying a flight to Lisbon…

Then the apparently foolproof solution appears: booking another trip.

Because having a getaway on the calendar is exciting.

And because looking for flights is much more entertaining than answering all the emails that built up in August.

But if you have been working for exactly 37 minutes and are already comparing hotels in Lisbon, it may be worth waiting a little before taking out your card.

Booking another trip can give you a small rush of happiness, but it does not change what made the return difficult.

If you have come back sleeping badly, with an impossible schedule and twenty pending tasks, having a flight in three weeks will not make any of that disappear.

The goal should not be to escape the routine as soon as possible, but to make sure the routine is not also a place you constantly need to escape from.

And for that, there are a few things much more effective than opening an incognito flight-search tab.

Your landing plan

You do not need to reinvent yourself in September, join the gym, start meditating, learn Italian and organise every cupboard in your home.

You need to land.

If you can, avoid coming back from holiday on Sunday at 23:40 only to be in front of your computer on Monday at 8:00.

Leaving one or two days between returning and going back to work helps you recover your schedule and deal with those small household tasks that seem insignificant until they all arrive at once.

And if you want to make the most of the trip until the very last minute —completely understandable—, at least try to make the return easy for yourself:

• Recover your sleep.

  Gradually returning to your usual schedule, getting natural light in the morning and not stretching the nights as if you were still on holiday helps your body understand that the screen has changed.

• Remove decisions from your plate.

  Prepare some food, think about what you are going to wear, organise transport and sort out the small things you know you will need the next day. Every decision you do not have to make on a Monday morning counts.

• Do not try to catch up on three weeks in three hours.

  Spend the first stretch of work reviewing what happened, setting priorities and deciding what really needs your attention. Spoiler: probably not everything is urgent.

• Recover the rhythm, not the intensity.

  Move, go outside, gradually return to your usual schedule and plan something pleasant during the week. If all the good things in the year happen during the holidays, the comparison with any Tuesday will inevitably be unfair.

It is not about turning Tuesday into Bali.

But it is about making sure Tuesday also has something you do not want to cancel.

Coming back with one less thing on the list also helps

There is another fairly simple strategy to make the landing more manageable: try to make sure fewer things are waiting for you when you return, not more.

And some of them can be sorted out even before you leave.

At aparca&go, we see it every day.

Knowing that when you land, the journey home with your own car is already sorted makes the return a little easier.

And if, during the days you have been away, you have used the time to have it washed, pass its ITV or get that inspection you had been postponing for weeks, even better.

It will not make you want to open your work email.

But it will mean coming back with one less thing on the list.

And after a trip, that is appreciated.

When the slump passes, ask yourself one question

After a few days, it is worth looking back and asking what made the return especially hard.

Maybe the answer is simple: you had slept little, came back too late, had an empty fridge and tried to recover your entire life in 24 hours.

That is easy to fix for the next trip.

But maybe the return has simply shone a light on something that was already there before you left: a schedule that does not let you breathe, a routine you do not like or a job that has been making you feel bad for a while.

You do not need to rethink your life on a Monday in September.

But you also should not systematically ignore what it is telling you.

Because missing the holidays is one thing.

Needing a permanent holiday from your own life is something else entirely.

Travel again. Of course.

The fact that compulsively booking a trip is not the solution to the post-holiday blues does not mean you have to spend autumn locked at home reflecting on your life choices.

Travelling is still a great idea.

When a few days have passed and you feel like you are back behind the wheel —metaphorically speaking—, open that flight tab again.

And before booking, ask yourself three questions:

1. Would I also book this today if I had had a good day?
2. Does it fit my budget and schedule without adding more stress?
3. Do I want to go to that place, or do I simply want to leave this one?

If the answers fit, go for it.

Start thinking about where you will sleep, what you want to see, what you will pack and, while you are at it, where you are going to leave the car.

Because having another trip ahead can be wonderful.

But book it because you want to go, not because you cannot stand staying.