Posted on: Monday, December 23, 2002

AT WORK
Holiday coping strategy helps after trading Maui for Des Moines

By Dawn Sagario
The Des Moines Register

Forty degrees below zero.

I sat in my apartment on a December night two years ago, with the heat going full-blast — yet still bundled in a long-sleeved shirt, sweatpants, two pairs of socks and a sweatshirt, while pulling a thick blanket up to my chin.

It was 40-below wind chill in Des Moines, Iowa, the smiling meteorologist on The Weather Channel announced.

I was poised to send the remote control hurtling at his smug-looking face — had I been able to unclench my frozen fingers.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Growing up in Hawai'i, I'm used to temperatures "below" normal at this time of year hovering in the 60s. ("Pull out the blankets tonight, folks," the TV talking head would advise.)

I had lived for four months in Iowa, turning down a job in Honolulu to accept an offer as a business reporter at The Des Moines Register.

As I sat listening to the weatherman drone on about terms foreign to me, such as wind chill and flurries, an epiphany dawned: I was no longer a kid.

I realized for the first time, after 4 1/2 years of college, there was no monthlong Christmas break.

Nix the four weeks of late-night partying. No sleeping in. No heading out to the beach to languish.

I'd traded that life for the daily grind of a 40-hour work week, with just two weeks of vacation a year. Two glorious weeks that were so highly revered that rationing them among 365 days a year would become a kind of science. In addition, I had just started my job, and I was out the $700 it would cost for a plane ticket home to Maui.

While I don't celebrate Christmas, it was the time of year where everyone — family and friends — could be together at the same time.

The transition from full-time college student to full-time career is a major milestone, with its unique growing pains. Trying to cope with those life changes can be compounded during the holidays, when your support system of family and friends are thousands of miles away.

Holidays are part of the traditions that make up our comfort zone, said Tammy Hoyman, manager of clinical operations for the employee assistance program at Employee and Family Resources in Des Moines.

Hoyman said moving to a different place and starting a new job can mean altering the ingrained expectations of how the holidays are supposed to be spent.

Bouts with depression, work dissatisfaction and family problems that have lingered all year can easily become magnified during this time, Hoyman said.

"The holidays are a time when that change and transition becomes very real for us," she said. "I think there's this image that we should be with our families, and that there should be some adult cooking us this wonderful meal, while you're watching movies or football."

If you can't make it home, it might be a good idea to start creating new traditions with people in your new location. Another possibility: Some families, spread across different parts of the nation, are opting to meet in locations other than mom and dad's, she said.

Finding others in similar situations could make coping during holidays easier, said Laura Fefchak, a therapist at the Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center.

I got a chance to make it home recently. I'd saved my two weeks worth of vacation, plus three personal days, mind you, and made the 15-hour trip to Hawai'i.

How far did the thermometer plunge while I was there?

To a "nippy" 65 degrees.