Compression Ends

Today is the first day back to a normal schedule, after volunteering for a shockingly retarded “compressed” schedule that did nothing but burn my soul to cinders.

I arrived at work 90 minutes later than usual and it’s a blast… An hour’s extra sleep, catching the bus in sunlight, walking through the city while it’s a bit more alive, and arriving at work feeling like most of the day has passed and quitting time is just around the corner.

There are only four more gigs for my weekend job, though I’ll try to pick up a few more in November, and then that’s done until March.  I look forward to those cold winter weekends, after working a normal week, where I have nothing to do for two solid days.  Throughout the wedding season, I pine for those weekends.  Get home at 7pm on a Friday, take off my clothes, and then stop functioning as a human being until 7am Monday.  Don’t get dressed, don’t bathe, don’t speak, don’t interact with anybody.  Just batter around the apartment watching Doctor Who, drinking, reading, and making exotic dinners at weird, late night hours.

I can imagine what that looks like from the parking lot.  The lonely glow of the computer screen as lousy British sci fi plays, a candle moving forlornly into the kitchen where I’ll mix yet another vodka tonic in the flickering shadows.  Gunmetal skies outside, skeletal trees scraping the windows.  An occasional, animal-like howl echoing through the cold winter night whenever the vodka runs dry.

All I have to do is get through October, and then I can slow down.  My current plan is to take every second Friday off, in a strange, PTO-burning mockery of the compressed schedule.  Not to get chores done…just because I really am exhausted.  I’d love to scale back, or even quit, the weekend job, but I’m ruled by money.  I wasn’t always… And I wonder, was the dream of publishing books worth it?  Or should I have taken two years off from the working world and become a crazed shut-in?  Which would have been the healthier choice, in the long run?