I could hold on to that guy.
But no, he's receding into the past. The holiday is over.
My other self is emerging again, the one who gets deeply frustrated about climate change inaction. Who is worried about Omicron and the readiness of New Zealand's health system to cope.
Who wants to appeal to Kiwis' better natures and convince enough people that a wealth tax is necessary, before inequality pulls society further apart.
This guy accepts that politics is unavoidable. Decisions about how society is organised, threats countered, always have to be made.
So we've got to keep talking, got to keep educating ourselves, got to keep caring.
Towards the end of the extremely popular Netflix movie Don't Look Up, there's a scene where the main characters are gathered with family for a last meal. The comet is about to hit Earth.
They do a round of the table and share what each is grateful for.
The astronomer who first discovered the comet, played by Jennifer Lawrence, is grateful that they tried to do something. They tried to get the world to act in time to prevent the comet from colliding with the planet.
It's been well publicised that the comet threat and the portrayal of the media, politicians and tech-capitalists is a satire of the world's response to global warming.
Climate scientists and activists have reacted positively to the movie. They see their frustrations mirrored back at them.
Many of them want to scream about the years of inaction that threatens our very survival as a species.
Recently George Monbiot, a well-known environmentalist who writes for The Guardian and has written books on climate change, broke down in tears on morning television in Britain. The weight of global inaction on reducing carbon emissions was too much to hold in.
It was a real-life moment similar to the TV outbursts of the scientists in Don't Look Up.
In a column about the movie, Monbiot admitted crying most days. That's a devastating admission that most of us would find difficult to relate to.
We should, however, feel for his level of commitment.
We might also want to educate ourselves in the science that is so worrying intelligent people like Monbiot. Why are they so upset? It's a question worth asking.
Just as it's worth asking whether some of the things governments are promising to do to avert catastrophic climate change are actually enough.
Are the solutions being put forward really solutions at all? Are we moving as quickly as we need to be?
Our government has a number of climate change policies in the pipeline. Some have been signalled, some have yet to be announced.
They need to be scrutinised. They might amount to what's politically possible — an argument Labour and the Greens will make — but that doesn't mean they are what's necessary.
Climate change and our government's response will be a common theme in my columns this year.
I might risk sounding too negative at times. I might even sound uncomfortably shrill. Sometimes frustrations, even in print, can bubble through.
Hopefully, though, on the journey through the year, we can keep our hearts and minds open. Even maintain a sense of humour. That's one lesson from Don't Look Up, we can laugh as well as cry.
There's much to savour in day-to-day life but shutting out the bad stuff, like difficult truths about global warming, isn't an option if we want to preserve what really matters.
As each year passes and extreme weather events in New Zealand and overseas increase in frequency, it's getting harder and harder to look away.
