I overslept today.
Or rather I should just say that I slept.
I didn’t oversleep, unless you want to count work, which while I had planned on going in around four this afternoon, just wasn’t going to happen today. I had a few things that I needed to get out of the way before my friend gets here, and when I woke up after three o’clock in the afternoon, I knew work wasn’t in the cards.
Apparently seven full shifts in eight days is my limit these days, as my body forced me to sleep right through two alarms because it had had enough of sitting in a taxi as of late.
Had I not had a couple of extra chores I wanted to do today, I would have probably gone in late after I wrote this blog, but I really, truly did not feel like working. It’s just as well that I stayed in bed and slept a full eight hours for the first time in weeks – the last things I want to do is work myself delirious and be totally assed out for the first real weekend I’ve had off in my own city for months.
So I sat in bed for a while, read my messages and emails, hit my vapor stick and let my brain come online at its own speed. I made some tea and breakfast, called my health insurance provider and spent over an hour figuring out all of the tax benefits of the new health care laws coming up next year.
I went and got a haircut and a shave, which for twenty bucks is a steal, especially considering the beard that has really sprouted up as of late.
I scrubbed my floors for the first time in a year and suffice to say, they were long overdue.
And while I waited for them to dry, I hopped on my motorcycle and went out to the avenues to see an old friend and have a couple more cups of peppermint tea. Her little Christmas tree was all swaddled up in a blanket and we sat and talked, the same topics that come up every time we get the chance for a long, meandering conversation.
Love and sex and death and money.
The last one on that list was the whole reason I could afford to be there, because as much as I have fought myself over not having enough of it, of making sure that I will get through all this time off and not fall behind, I had to remind myself that I have enough.
I’ve always had enough, and right now I have more than I need.
All I had to do was go online and look at my savings account to remind myself that I’ve been saving all year, and that I needed to just relax. Missing one more day of work isn’t going to kill me, and if it means I tighten the belt a little extra in January, so be it. I doubt it’ll even come to that – I’ve got a tax return coming and it looks like my health insurance premiums are going to be lowered, so I’ll be fine. It’s only in my mind that things start falling apart because I took the day off of work.
Right now I’ve got my bills paid and money set aside for this time off and nothing is going to change because I missed one shift.
Even though I’ve got my finances dialed, my tendency is to want to work harder to achieve… what exactly? The feeling of being rundown and financially better off? To kill myself working so that right as a guest shows up I can have worked myself into a stupor that’ll take two days to sleep my way out of?
No, I slept in and took care of myself, visited a friend and caught up, drank some tea and now I’m back at home, writing my words, just like always. The roof is still over my head and my insurance is still paid and I’ve got enough bread to take the whole next month off if I wanted to.
So what’s the problem with another day spent relaxing and handling those non-job-related tasks that I’ve put off for far too long?
Not a goddamn thing, as far as I’m concerned.
