I’ve been differently-employed for three days now. On Monday, I tasted my newfound workday freedom by getting on a bus bound for Rhode Island, to have a delicious lunch with my parents before borrowing my dad’s truck (look I know it’s an SUV but truck is less syllables and less painful) to drive back down to New York, so that Stuart and I could have the car for the two weeks around his performance.
On Tuesday I woke up determined to fight off the hounds of laziness, and I spent the morning doing the necessary administrative tasks on my to-do list and the afternoon running errands.
And then yesterday I sort of crashed and burned. I tried to spend the morning working on creative writing, but the dull constant headache that plagued me meant that every 30 minutes spent writing was followed by another 30 minutes sitting quietly on the office couch trying to fight back the headache. I even watched an hour of daytime television and then felt terrible about myself and it and the world because DAMN, it’s not like it helped the headache.
Of course, it wasn’t until about 5 PM that I told Shana about the headaches (that I’d fought off Tuesday as well) and she, accustomed to my idiocy when it comes to my gentle addiction, reminded me that perhaps I simply hadn’t had my caffeine intake and BOY, did I go suck down three cups of PG Tips right then and there or WHAT. I’ve learned the lesson and today has started with a tall iced coffee and a cup of tea and it isn’t even 10 AM yet.
All this is by way of explaining something – the variability of this newfound freedom is doing my head in. Somewhat literally, yesterday. I woke up today and had a shower and some toast and sweet caffeine and here I sit at the computer.
On a superficial level, this is just like my days have been for years. But do not let the computer, the toast, the caffeine, and the morning shower fool you. This is nothing like the life I’ve grown accustomed to. Working at an office – someone else’s – removes a certain element of choice, of freedom, of self-direction. You’re there, on the clock (yes, you, reading from work) and while it may be boring, or mind-numbing, it’s DEFINED. And by and large, you do the same thing every day because it has been asked of you by someone else, and you chose to be there doing things required of you by someone else. Which sounds pretty good right about now, right? Well, this is nothing like that.
This? I’m like a penguin that got thrown from a plane, told by others that heck, you’ve got wings, use them! And the penguin (that’s me) suddenly has this vast array of CHOICE, this sink-or-swim, this need to assert independence and make the call. I could sit here doing nothing all day, or I could do something for myself and basically no one else.
It’s a mindfuck. Yesterday, several times, I almost called Stuart to just ask him to tell me what to DO. But the thing is, I know what to do. I have to make lists of things I want to accomplish, and then accomplish them. It sounds like work, work for other people who pay you to do the work, but it’s not.
Perhaps these truths are self-evident to those of you who have gone before me. And I know, as you will doubtless tell me, that I will find my groove, I’ll eventually pull my wings away from my terrified body and start flapping them even though yes, I know, if you threw a penguin from a plane it would have about twenty seconds of going ohshitohshitohshit before SPLAT. I know this about penguins.
Where was I? Right, the learning curve. There is a learning curve that I am standing at the bottom of, and the things I need to learn are self-direction, self-motivation, and OTHER THINGS THAT START WITH SELF.
So I’m determined – and armed with caffeine – to make today better than yesterday, to remember how crappy it felt to not know what to do. I’m determined to be one step ahead of where I was yesterday, every day, which isn’t something I’ve ever done when working for someone else, where the best thing to do is really the same thing every day.
I realize this is nothing like being a penguin. But you see what I mean.