….well, technically I still have eight hours or so of work left to go, but hey, not sweating that little detail. (Primarily because I’m too busy sweating everything else, it having hit 42*C out there this afternoon. Having to walk home alongside a major highway in a heatwave: just one of the many, many little details I did not think through before moving to Brampton.)
Anyhoo, yeah, it’s been awhile. I’ve taken a few long weekends since this whole stress-o-rama started at work, but those were for, y’know, reasons. My main concern this upcoming week is to have as little purpose as possible, for as long as possible. And in the meantime, there will be chocolate.
And I can start it all early, that’s what really gets me. Back in my old department a week off would require a tense scramble first of all to find someone to replace me, meaning I’d just now be tearing my hair out listing all the things I hadn’t had a chance to fill my replacement in on, because I was frantically trying to get things done to the point where I had time to acknowledge her existence. Followed by an entire week spent fighting the urge to remotely check my email… and discovering, when I did give in around Thursday night, that I’d accumulated about 500 or so. Approximately 175 of which would be my replacement forwarding something and asking if I knew anything about it. Another 98 would involve Extremely Urgent Projects, with deadlines of, say, Monday, that never even got read.
Whereas here in Soft Home, I announced three weeks ago that I was taking this week off, and my buyer was all "Oh…OK." All the deadlines just naturally resolved themselves around Tuesday noon, so by now I’m mostly about making sure I don’t have much to do the week I get back. With long, leisurely pauses to attend sample sales.
Not that I’ve been devalued, exactly — when I mentioned I was ‘thinking of moving’ the other day I had to add ‘Apartments! Not departments!" really quick to prevent a major buyer meltdown — only that, well, you find yourself a lot closer to earth when the CEO is no longer just down the hall. Yes, I’m highly respected and completely irrelevant all at the same time! And it feels goooooooood.
So… I’ve got no money ’cause I’ve just paid the rent, but I do have this spacious, well-appointed — and let’s not forget air-conditioned! — apartment as a result… hello, pretend hotel suite!
I wonder how Pizza Pizza guys react when you call them ‘room service’…
Shoebox: 