Beating the back-to-work blues, inboxes, passwords and all - Glenn Dwight

This is the face of a man who has returned to 4000 emails and a "quick Zoom catch-up". Photo / 123rf

It’s that time of year.

The Christmas ham is finally gone, and the Sampler box is down to the last pink wafers.

The fake Christmas tree has been wrestled back into its box in the garage, the same way you try to squeeze a sleeping bag into its bag.

All of this can only mean one thing.

The summer holidays are officially over.

And with it comes the realisation that it is time to return to work.

The days of lying in the sun with jandals on your feet are suddenly replaced by hunting for matching business socks.

Your summer wardrobe of togs, togs, undies gives way to the annual challenge of convincing your boss that shorts really are smart casual.

And then there is the final insult. You have to reset your alarm for work.

The alarm clock is the first villain of the piece.

On holiday, time becomes a suggestion rather than a rule. You wake when you wake. You eat when you feel like it. Trifle is an acceptable breakfast.

You completely lose track of the days and proudly ask “is it Thursday?” on a Tuesday.

Then the first morning back arrives, and the alarm erupts like a volcano you had forgotten was still active.

You hit the snooze button and hope for some sort of time miracle to save you.

The first real hurdle of returning to work is the password situation.

Every workplace system seems to forget you exist after 10 days away.

And you forget every password the moment you head off on holiday.

You try your birthday. No. You try the dog’s name with a number at the end. Still no. Even Password1 is rejected.

So you are forced to ask the system, also known as Liana from IT, to reset it. Only to be told your password is insecure.

Which feels fitting, because your current emotional state is also insecure.

Once you finally crack the password code and get into your computer, the next shock to the system is the inbox.

There’s nothing more confronting than seeing 4000 unread emails before your first coffee.

Some are genuinely important. Some were important two weeks ago.

Some are long reply-all chains where six people have chimed in, and the final message simply says “Thoughts?” which is always worrying because you cannot remember who any of these people are or why they want your thoughts.

A helpful tip is to reply all with “unsubscribe”.

The clothing shift is another challenge.

Holiday clothes have a certain freedom, the sort of freedom you get from shorts that show off your pins and a T-shirt that proudly follows the rule that if the sun’s out, the guns are out.

But work clothes live in a completely different universe.

Shoes suddenly have laces again.

Shirts come with stiff collars and pants offer none of the “breathing room” your short-shorts so generously provided on a hot day.

The drive to work also feels unfamiliar.

Suddenly, the punishing traffic is back, if not worse, because all the drivers share a back-to-work anger that is expressed with aggressive horn blowing when your position in a queue is threatened.

The weather never helps. It’s perfect on the first day back.

A perfect blue sky. The kind of day that practically begs for a dip, and you’re stuck in a car with a lukewarm water bottle and the B-rotate radio host because the real host is still on holiday.

At the office, or the workshop, or the farm office desk, you do your best to rejoin humanity.

The number of “how was your break?” questions is matched only by the unread emails in your inbox.

You give the same answer every time because nobody actually listens.

They simply want a chance to talk about their time in Wānaka or Kaiteriteri or Coromandel or the Bay of Islands.

Then comes the moment you open the work fridge and discover the Christmas lunch treats you left behind.

The safest option is to shut the door and walk away.

Someone will eventually send an all-office email reminding everyone they are not our mum and will not be cleaning the fridge.

Some workplaces have a group catch-up meeting.

This can go one of two ways.

The short version, where someone says: “Hope everyone had a good break. Right. Here is what we need to do.”

Or the long version, where everyone is asked to share their holiday highlights.

This is when you realise some people can turn a three-day trip to Taupō into a 20-minute presentation.

The worst is when someone says “long story short” only to make a short story long.

There are small wins, though.

The relief of seeing a colleague like Olivia who shares your exact sense of humour and your quiet, unspoken venom toward the same office characters.

You trade the familiar eyebrow raise across the room that translates to ”here we go again”.

She returns the look that says “I know”.

These are the people who make the working year survivable.

They always laugh at your jokes in serious Zoom meetings, which makes it look like they are not taking the meeting seriously and should have left the camera off.

The truth is that returning to work is not just a physical shift. It is a mental gear change.

Summer-you is a relaxed version of yourself that survives on sunshine, ice blocks and the occasional sausage roll from the petrol station.

Work-you runs on systems, deadlines and the mysterious ability to look busy while rebooting your computer for the 10th time.

So here is the trick for surviving 2026.

Mix holiday-you and work-you together.

Keep a little of that summer ease tucked in your pocket for the moments when everything feels too serious.

Most of what we are doing is not brain surgery, unless you actually are a brain surgeon, so try not to sweat the small stuff.

Remember to have fun and breathe when things get crazy.