{"id":226,"date":"2008-09-22T08:57:45","date_gmt":"2008-09-22T13:57:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatsociety.org\/?p=226"},"modified":"2018-10-31T09:46:48","modified_gmt":"2018-10-31T13:46:48","slug":"compression-ends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/?p=226","title":{"rendered":"Compression Ends"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is the first day back to a normal schedule, after volunteering for a shockingly retarded \u201ccompressed\u201d schedule<\/a> that did nothing but burn my soul to cinders.<\/p>\n


\nI arrived at work 90 minutes later than usual and it\u2019s a blast\u2026 An hour\u2019s extra sleep, catching the bus in sunlight, walking through the city while it\u2019s a bit more alive, and arriving at work feeling like most of the day has passed and quitting time is just around the corner.<\/p>\n

There are only four more gigs for my weekend job, though I\u2019ll try to pick up a few more in November, and then that\u2019s done until March.\u00a0 I look forward to those cold winter weekends, after working a normal week, where I have nothing to do for two solid days.\u00a0 Throughout the wedding season, I pine for those weekends.\u00a0 Get home at 7pm on a Friday, take off my clothes, and then stop functioning as a human being until 7am Monday.\u00a0 Don\u2019t get dressed, don\u2019t bathe, don\u2019t speak, don\u2019t interact with anybody.\u00a0 Just batter around the apartment watching Doctor Who<\/em>, drinking, reading, and making exotic dinners at weird, late night hours.<\/p>\n

I can imagine what that looks like from the parking lot.\u00a0 The lonely glow of the computer screen as lousy British sci fi plays, a candle moving forlornly into the kitchen where I\u2019ll mix yet another vodka tonic in the flickering shadows.\u00a0 Gunmetal skies outside, skeletal trees scraping the windows.\u00a0 An occasional, animal-like howl echoing through the cold winter night whenever the vodka runs dry.<\/p>\n

All I have to do is get through October, and then I can slow down.\u00a0 My current plan is to take every second Friday off, in a strange, PTO-burning mockery of the compressed schedule.\u00a0 Not to get chores done\u2026just because I really am exhausted.\u00a0 I\u2019d love to scale back, or even quit, the weekend job, but I\u2019m ruled by money.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t always\u2026 And I wonder, was the dream of publishing books worth it?\u00a0 Or should I have taken two years off from the working world and become a crazed shut-in?\u00a0 Which would have been the healthier choice, in the long run?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is the first day back to a normal schedule, after volunteering for a shockingly retarded \u201ccompressed\u201d schedule that did nothing but burn my soul to cinders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[400],"class_list":["post-226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wage-slave","tag-wage-slave"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1049,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions\/1049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}