So today was a pleasantly warm late winter day. Probably too warm from the perspective of what actual spring and summer temperatures might turn out to be. But Hibernating-Bear-Me was, without a doubt, bemusedly surprised, once again, at how functional I feel once it hits 18° and there’s no wind chill.
The Spouse and one of the Kiddos and I went for a walk around mid-morning today. (The other kiddo has free rein to take themselves to their taekwondo class and come back home all on their lonesome. I think there are definitely clear advantages of being a parent of children who are hitting their teenage years, and I want to centre on that gratitude instead of focus on ways that teenaged children can be challenging.) Being in the sunshine and feeling warm — too warm — was a total luxury.
I had energy. I stopped feeling like everything was overwhelming and too hard. I was kind to myself. We had an especially delicious blood orange doughnut from Short Stop. The sky was that really deep, saturated blue that seems to be unique to Australia and there were almost no clouds. It just felt good to feel good.
I have made a pretty big decision in recent months. I have decided I do indeed need a career break; but a planned, graceful exit instead of a rapid emergency jump. I feel funny about sharing that fact. Part of me feels guilty — it feels like everyone else in the world is struggling so hard to make ends meet. I don’t want to rub my good fortune in anyone’s face, and it is indeed very good fortune that I’m in a position to just not need to be full-time employed for several months and have no immediate plans for paid labour.
It is also true that I’ve had a lot of hard things happen, and I was traumatised by them, and I also deserve time to figure myself out before I’m fifty — what do I want to do with myself right now? Who do I want to be? The problem with the 9-5 full time grind is that I’m finding at the end of the day and the end of the week I have no battery reserves left for things I want and need to be doing. Despite the fact that my current job is not the high-stress minefield of some of my previous gigs, I’m still running out of steam every week.
Personal projects are getting left by the wayside. Household clutter piles up. Only the essential chores are getting done. My to-read pile is growing (not helped by the fact that I let The Spouse talk me into tackling The Stormlight Archive). By Sunday, I’ve been hitting a wall where I feel like I can’t face starting the week all over again because I’m just not mentally ready and recharged to dive back into the grind. There has been nothing to recharge the batteries.
The career break has been penciled in to start at the end of this year. I have some things I want to tie a bow around at work (and I genuinely want to see them done and have a hand in them). It also doesn’t hurt to have a little bit more saved up before my big reboot. Stopping right before the Christmas shutdown feels like it brings the current chapter to a nice, tidy end. I hope that will be the actual case.
Right now I’m just counting down Mondays. I like my job and I like the people I work with, but it’s not giving me what I need. I just really, really need some time in dry dock to scrape all the barnacles off, and figure out what comes next.