Sometimes, past eras of life feel a little unreal. Somehow it was only three years ago when I left the library, where I had been for 21 years, a fact that is also somehow similarly unreal. My days were often hectic, especially when I had the studio space, where I liked to spend 2-3 hours everyday before going to the work I actually got paid to do. I was at the library for an eight hour shift, then another 45 minutes home via the bus at around 11pm. I would waste time online or listening to music, and then fall into bed only to do it again the next day. Even now, it seems very exhausting. We won't even talk about the mid-to-late aughts when I was also simultaneously working on my MFA.
There are days now when we linger longer in bed, usually after a late night, in which we burrow in further and complain about working and having to get up and face the day when we could much rather wallow there in the covers for a few more hours. The other morning, we woke up to snow, and though J had to venture out later in the day to see to his mom and host a few hours of karaoke in the evening, I stayed in my pajamas and wrote all day to make a few deadlines I wanted to wrap before the week..not a bad fate, and surely a much more preferable life to the one I was living a decade ago. The night before, we'd been out for a late movie at Alamo..a documentary about a softcore horror director making a movie called "Witches of Breastwick" (it actually starred the famous Stormy Daniels.) This, lingering in bed and movie screenings, are all thanks to no longer working such a crazy schedule. While J has DJing things and occasional film company business at night, we do have at least a couple free evenings for outings I've been to more movie screenings and more plays/musicals in the past year than in all my two decades in the city prior. .
It also helps that I am making quite a bit more money as a freelancer, so between the two of us, things are not as tight as they once were, which makes room for date nights and not white knuckling every paycheck (well maybe a little since I spend way too much money on theater tickets and tattoos of late...lol..) I find myself thinking of how many times I walked out the front door of my building, lugging my usually heavy totebag filled with books and art supplies and shop goods on my way downtown., heading to the bus stop a block over for my commute. Five, sometimes six days a week for just over 20 years. With J's vehicle, I realized with a start I haven't been on a bus for over a year (and even before that it was infrequent trips down to pick things up from the printer that I now have delivered via courier.) On the few occasions we're not driving, we usually Uber. My mother used to say she did not know how I had the energy for any of it, and I would shrug, since I really didn't know anything else.
Had you told me life would be any different than it was one or two decades ago, I may not have believed you. I went from college and grad school into the working world at the elementary school, so even working 8 hours at Columbia was favorable to 7:30 AM start times for $7.50 an hour I had at first. My schedule was packed, and everything felt like a struggle, but at the time, I couldn't see other options. It was scary that first year (for all sorts of reasons, not even just venturing out on my own) but it did pay off immeasurably.
So this winter, you will likely find me in bed til around noon, then up and plunging into whatever writing projects have been assigned for the day. Later I'll do more creative things like edit my own poems and make or plan content for socials. Weekends are mostly press and design stuff unless we have other plans. It still sometimes needs balancing, but feels far less stressful and far more sane than it did before. I can weirdly feel the changes in my body when I get stressed now, when they were pretty much a continuous, unnoticeable thing when my days were much more hectic. While weeks can busy with projects and deadlines, I no longer hit my weekends exhausted and only capable of doomscrolling or napping until I have to go back to the work week. This makes me feel infinitely more present and attentive, something I always was bemoaning the lack of come each yearly round up.
