Today, it occurred to me very suddenly that it is summer.
Maybe that makes me an extraordinarily slow person, that's certainly possible but it did come as a surprise. It happened when I heard someone skateboarding outside and then saw a little girl adjusting a handbag the size of her chest, slung formally over one bent elbow as she approached the gate to her friend's house. Going to play.
It's a summer day, kids are sleeping in or going to day camp. They're swinging their legs over pools or riverbanks or piers and they're talking to their friends. They're wearing their play clothes and enjoying the sun. They're not worried.
And I realized that can be me too. I've been caught up in the idea that I don't have enough and so I need to be concerned about work all the time but all that seems to do is make the days feel like they're wasted even before they begin and truth be told, although my income is meagre, it is there and it is growing slowly.
It's summer. I can wear play clothes, I can stand on my balcony and drink iced coffee, hell, I can work on my balcony if I want to. I can go to the river and swim. I can do all of these things anytime I want. I've made enough sacrifices that my work lives with me, it's part of my life, it's in service to me, not the other way around.
So I took a breather and let myself out of the vice grips. I can do whatever I want because I will no longer do what I don't want to do. I refuse to give my life over to stuff I hate. No way. No more. But it's hard to remember that it's ok to be that way. I often slip into feeling guilty about it and then my productivity drops through the floor. It's a paradox and it's tricky to avoid.
I grew up thinking work had to feel bad or it wasn't work. At the same time I am not the kind of person who can really attend to people or things I dislike. That means I am really bad at most of the things I would consider work and really good at the things I love to do.
Most of the things I love to do are things people would consider to be work - so that's where I earn my living but the guilt gets in the way.
Well, not today. Today, I'll do whatever I want and I hope I'll do that tomorrow and every day for the rest of my life and sometimes I'll get paid for it and sometimes I won't and that's just fine by me.
random thoughts on the passage through an ordinary life.
About Me
- Stephanie Farrington
- I figure if there's an average person, it's probably me. That is to say, I have lived in a few places, probably about average, I have a post-secondary education and an unfinished MFA - which is probably average for people who pursue and education, I'm hitting middle age, my job has been downsized and resized so many times it's safe to say I've never had any job security. I live an average life on the precarious edge of the middle class. I'm happily married to an American, I hold Canadian citizenship, for now. But I'm so disgusted with just about everything going on in Canada that I may pursue changing my citizenship to match my husband's. I am fiercely loyal to American ideals, in part because they make sense and in part because I am descended from a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The idea of an equitable democracy, a meritocracy - that appeals to me. I write, I read, talk, take pictures and worry - just like everybody else. The hopes I hold most dear are for the health and well being of my immediate family, myself included, and the continuance of my happy life with my wonderful husband. Everything else seems manageable.
No comments:
Post a Comment