As much as I love what I do, this “working” shit is for the birds. I have done many jobs from my home over the past seventeen years, but as much as I have hated some of it, none of it was as bad as having to leave my house in the early dark and come home in the late dark and only get a few hours’ of sleep in between, even if it is only on the weekend. I leave at 5:00 AM, drive for a million hours, then work for ten hours, then drive a million hours back. By Monday morning, I’m a zombie.
Actually, that’s not true. By Sunday morning, I am a zombie. By Monday morning, I am more like a dead dog on the side of the road that the zombies eat. I wake up Saturday morning all perky and ready to roll. I do my hair, put on nice clothes and make up and off we go. Sunday morning, I look more like this:
So people likely think two different women own the shop. Sunday morning, I am prying my eyes open, missing Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew desperately to wake me up, and praying I don’t drive off the side of the mountain or rear end someone on the way there. I have worked full time jobs before, but I have never worked long hours like this. I know plenty of people do it and I am not sure why my body refuses to adapt into it.
No matter how much I sleep, I stay physically exhausted from Saturday night until around Wednesday morning. I make sure not to expect to much from myself early on in the week. I am grateful to have the opportunity to power down and recover.
This week, Andrea and I started walking again, a little over two and a half miles. I had not walked for exercise in over three months because a shoe changed kicked in some long dormant plantar fasciitis and I could barely hobble for weeks. When I was better, I wanted to give it some time to be sure, but also we had really rainy weather, so it was not really conducive to plowing around in the woods as we do. Now we are back at it, a minimum of three times a week and shooting for four. Both days, I noticed that my stamina was nothing like it used to be, so I am grateful to build that up again. We were able to run the last part of it, so we didn’t feel like complete slackers. Today, neither of us felt like going for a thousand or so reasons, but we did it anyway.
I have not written as I want to because life keeps getting in the way, so my remedy is to drastically reduce how often I go to town. My goal is no more than twice a week, excluding work on the weekends. For a while there, it seemed like I went up and down the mountain daily, which takes up my whole day. Now I take Nathan to see his teacher every two weeks and go to bellydance class on Thursday nights. That should be plenty.
No wise words hear this week (I’m still coming out of the weekend fog); just love and good wishes out to all of you and a lot of gratitude for the challenges I face and the blessings I receive.
(The good news is I am learning a LOT about computers to add to the stuff I already knew!)