Today I have completed one month on my new temporary assignment. Two days ago I went back to my home agency to spend a few minutes with each of several people with whom I had loose ends to tie. It was unanimous: "You look so relaxed!" each of them said. I actually had to sit for 15 minutes outside the office of one of them, waiting for her to be free. And, I just sat there...relaxed, breathing. What a difference a month makes.
How did I get here in just 30 days? Well, let's start with where I was a month ago. I'd been working 12-hour days for years. I almost never got to eat lunch unless it was grabbing a bite, quite literally on the run. Meetings were scheduled back-to-back, every 30 to 60 minutes, with no breaks, meaning that drinking water and bathroom stops were luxuries about which I'd forgotten.
When I walked out of the office at 7:30 most evenings and commuted home, I usually hit the door, headed to the kitchen to make coffee for morning, prepare lunch for those fleeting pass-throughs of my office when I might grab a morsel on the run, and cooked dinner, which I then tried to eat without falling asleep in my plate. (Usually, but not always successful. Success was usually contingent on the day of the week. Higher likelihood of staying awake through dinner on Monday than Friday.)
That had been my life for years. So, when I started this new job which allowed me to work a "normal" workday and then walk to a Metro stop that was closer to home, My old programming was still in place. One of the first evenings, I came home and did all of the above without falling asleep, and when I was cleaning the dishes from dinner, I glanced over at the clock, and it was 7:00! I had done all that stuff, and it was still earlier than I had been accustomed to leaving the office. I literally heaved a sigh...and then laughed out loud.
I quickly adjusted to being able to do things after work--run an errand or two, go to a dinner at my church or with a friend, go to a movie, volunteer for a local theater and see the play without falling asleep, do my laundry or pay bills on a week night, leaving time for more fun stuff on the weekend. And, I started breathing and moved at a normal, rather than break-neck, pace.
When each of my appointments acknowledged how relaxed I looked Monday, I felt acknowledgement that I was back in the world--I am a real person again.
On September 29, just days after starting the new job, I wrote in this blog that I had discovered that my accelerator had stuck in high gear, and I pledged to use these four and a half months to remember how I used to live. I have to admit that early in my career, I had been a workaholic, and like any addiction, once an addict, always an addict. When things got tight, in the early 2000s, I just fell right off the wagon and back into those old habits.
But, I do remember a very long time when I lived a sane life, stopping at the gym on the way home from work, having a drink and going over mail with my partner, and cooking together joyfully in the kitchen. After it was established and when my business was going well, I both exercised and danced almost every day, and I took time to write. I cooked for fun and even played the piano occasionally, although never well. My life was full but relaxed much of the time.
I have proven that I can reclaim that part of me again. I have yet to prove that I can sustain it. I do know that I need to be clearer about my boundaries, and I am optimistic that with a new boss when I return, I can maintain them. Yet, I know the Universe abhors a vacuum, and the Universe of a recovering workaholic certainly abhors a vacuum. I am being very intentional about identifying and exercising practices which will solidify my resolve. Writing regularly again is one of them. So is exercising. Pleasure reading is up there too. I want to learn to do those things so regularly in the next three and a half months that my new healthier habits will sustain me when I go back to my old job.
I understand that having a life is a choice, and it is a choice that I am going to make, each and every day in the future.
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