Time is catching up with me. It was to be expected. As novelty and excitement starts to wear off, a more sustainable rythm needs to be found.
I’m starting to feel tired. That’s what I’m paid for, my dad would say. Not badly tired, just, tired. So I’m being careful before I need to be.
Sleep. Don’t take on too much. Give myself time to breathe, and more importantly, think. Thinking is so important. At work, too. Taking time to look out of the window while solutions take shape. Doing is not only typing on a keyboard. I am perfectly comfortable with the fact my work requires me to think. 15 years ago, I’m not sure I was.
I had to take a day off work on my first week, to teach elsewhere (a preexisting commitment). At first I thought I’d catch up those hours. But after a couple of weeks I discovered that making up for 8+ hours when you’re already working 4.5 days a week, and commuting 2.5 hours a day is not easy. I decided to stop trying to stretch my already long days to make up for it, and cash in a day of vacation instead. A wise decision: I now have a few hours in the bank, which means I don’t have to worry about those days where I have to leave work early, and I can be home at 6pm.
Having a basic structure for my time is interesting. It’s something I can build upon. It’s constraining, of course: I have few hours every day to spend with my old cat Quintus, less time to see friends and family. I’m alseep by 10pm, up at 5.30. My struggle of all these last years to try to introduce some routine in my too-free life has been solved for me – dramatically.
My weeks pretty much all look the same now. Head off to Fribourg on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Lausanne on Wednesday, work in the morning, errands and appointments and the odd client appointment in the afternoon. Laundry on Friday evening when I get home. Maybe grocery shopping too – doing that on Saturday is just miserable. And I discovered last week that doing laundry and grocery shopping on Friday means that when I get up on Saturday, I’m pretty much “free”.
I’m discovering that I don’t have that much practice functioning when tired. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. Previously, when I was tired, I’d rest, and try and do things when I was in good shape. Now, the calendar rather than how I feel determines what I do. It’s a strange change.