Not ready / the year of ‘no’
I had five days off, and yes three of them were either weekend days or nationally recognized holidays. But still. I have to put out a newsletter at 8:30 a.m. and I have no clue how that’s going to happen.
So, yeah, not ready to go back to the “grind” when A) I never really left it and B) it’s resuming with a crisis.
My health problem didn’t solve itself. Nor did pumping myself full of drugs for a week. So, I start off the new year with the same stupid health issues and the same TIME issues that got in the way of them in the first place.
This year, however, I’m prioritizing me. And Mom too. We deserve it. If we’re going to see 2015, this has to be the “year of no.” In other words, saying it as much as I hear it, if not more.
I have to resume a discussion about making one of my people happy financially. And damn it, if it’s at my own expense (and I think — no, I KNOW — that will be the case), well, I have decisions to make.
I went to visit a friend whose husband is a firefighter. Who has days off and vacations and even has dead days at work where they’re sitting around decompressing and getting ready for the next big event.
They don’t burn themselves out (pun not intentional, but appropriate). They don’t guilt themselves that they didn’t work fast enough for put in enough hours or time or save enough people. They do their best and they take care of themselves and they stay on the squad for decades at a time because they CAN and because they WANT TO.
And I laugh that I work twice as many hours as him and my job isn’t exactly vital to humanity, you know? I take this shit so seriously and so does he, but when it comes down to it, the world doesn’t need my damn fairy dust that I crank out. The world does need what he does.
Maybe that’s why I work so hard. Well, the “keeping a job the world doesn’t need” is part of it. The “spending insane amounts of money to compensate for everything else that’s missing” is another part.
I was telling him about what a joke my condo is. He said he’d never want to be a firefighter in Florida. At least up north, most houses are built sturdily and there’s a chance of saving them. In Florida, he said, everything’s so flimsy that the firefighters basically just wait for the structure to burn down before putting it out. No challenge in that, he said.
And my building is the tallest piece of shit around. It would collapse in a heartbeat. And if I didn’t already feel like I needed to run for the hills, well, talking to him sealed the deal.
So, I’m not ready to go back into my hamster wheel. But I guess if I need to move and afford things, I guess what I want isn’t up for debate. Hand me a new barf bag and let the motion sickness begin again.
Only this time, remind me to make a doctor’s appointment or else, I mean it, I ain’t gonna make it out of this one intact, let alone alive …