Tuesday, March 25, 2008

The Good Thing About Working Way Too Much . . .

. . . is not what you think it is. (I wonder what anyone would suspect the benefit is.) The real benefit is the perspective.

Back in my crazy, workaholic days (i.e. two weeks ago), I averaged about seven hours a day to myself. That actually sounds like a lot of time. Let me assure you that it’s not. That seven hours included getting ready for work, commuting (not far, but every 15 minutes counts), doing laundry, checking the mail, eating breakfast and / or dinner, occasionally putting dishes in the dishwasher (although this usually wouldn’t happen until my roommate called from the airport to tell me she’d landed), maintaining some sort of minimal contact with the outside world (that kind of fell by the wayside), and, my personal favorite, sleeping. But I digress.

The benefit is in the perspective. I haven’t worked more than ten hours a day in more than a week now, and boy, do I feel like a slacker. I get home in plenty of time to take the trash out. There are other people around when I get my mail. I listen to the BBC World Service by choice these days, not just because no one’s talking on NPR. I have all the time in the world.

I think all this time on my hands is starting to make me a little stir crazy.

4 comments:

daria said...

Hi!! Hopefully you're not totally stressed out - those long days can really start to hurt after a while. I hope you're getting good sleep now!

Sorry we didn't connect at Christmas - stuff got so hectic. Next time you're up Maine way maybe we can try again.

RobRoy said...

Wait, wait. What do you mean "no one's talking on NPR" . . . despite the fact that you used the possessive form instead of the plural.

Kelly said...

Horrible phenomenon here . . . the NPR stations both here and in Georgia switch to classical music for large chunks of the day (and overnight). So, quite literally, no one is (contracted as no one's) talking.

RobRoy said...

Gotcha. It's still not a proper contraction.