Time is not on my side

I’ve been thinking a lot, not that I don’t do that anyway, but more than usual these days. It happens around this time of year, with summer ending and me longing for the simpler days when this time of year meant shopping for school supplies and new shoes and pants that didn’t have holes in the knees from a summer spent grubbing around in the dirt. It also happens this time of year because my birthday is…well…just about now and birthdays are the perfect time to assess your life.

Mostly I’ve been thinking how out of control my life is, and it isn’t out of control in that movie-of-the-week/after school special sort of cool way, you know, all dangerous with the leather jacket and the attitude. Granted, the idea that we can control our lives at all is somewhat laughable. For those of us who weren’t born rich, life means a series of obligations (pay the student loans, pay off the car, make the rent, send the check to the gas company) that require us to trade the bulk of our time every day for money. It’s out of control in that, at my age, which while I’m not “young” any more I’m not middle aged perse (god, I hope I live to be more than double how hold I am now), I should have a pretty good handle on how I spend my time. Friends, leisure activities, family, and that pesky thing we call work, and work is the vexing problem.

So, after five years of working diligently to build my skills in a second career I find myself working at a non-profit organization that, to the outside world, seems to be doing a lot of good. On the inside, below the surface, the place is a festering morass of disillusionment, bad decisions, and wasted money. I find myself working in a job that I’m not allowed to do properly because expectations are too high, resources are too low, and prioritizing is seen as negativity, and all for about $25,000 less per year than the job described by my official job description, which is far less than what I am actually required to do, is actually worth on the open market.

I find myself wanting to fix this organization’s problems because the solutions are so simple, and yet, no one in a (theoretical) position of responsibility seems to see them. So, I find myself obsessing about work, turning it over in my mind like a big knotted ball of string, trying to figure out which threads I need to pull or untangle to straighten everything out. I think about work pretty much all the time. This is why I’m in such a scary place right now.

See, I’m starting a six-week sabbatical today. Yes, I can hear the violins coming out of the cases “six weeks off with pay, what the hell is there to whine about in that?!?!?!???” The reality is that six-weeks in a mental hospital is probably what I need as I find myself sitting here thinking, “OK, I’ve got all this time, what do I do now? I’m not at work, what do I do? WHAT DO I DO NOW?”

Weekends at my house are normally filled with chores: mow the lawn, vacuum the house, take out the trash, clean the bathroom, go to the grocery store, help my mother with her ongoing home renovation. And many of those things could be easily accomplished by throwing money at them (hire a lawn service, hire a cleaning lady) except for that not being born rich thing.

Weekends are easy…do the chores while my brain churns about work. Be diverted briefly by a movie while my brain tries not to waste the $9 ticket price and churn about work (though inevitably some part of it does), try to sleep while my brain churns about work, and then, suddenly, it’s Monday morning and it’s time to get up and go to work again where I can pick off the small, valiant scab that has formed over the festering infection that is my job.

So, at nearly 34 years old I have no idea what to do with my time once my job is removed from the equation. When did I forget how to play? To just try something new because it seemed like fun? Hell, when I did I forget what fun means to me? And can I ever relearn those things or is it just too late?