Underemployment Monday

I spent the week-end feeling like I had fallen out of time, not being sure what day it was.  I'm not sure why.  I had a fairly regular work week, although I did leave the office much earlier than usual on Friday.

I spent the week-end working on my online classes, working on seminary classes, getting groceries, cooking:  in short, a normal week-end.  But there was also the putting stuff from the office away, the talking to people on the phone and through social media to assure them that I'm OK, and my mind returning to the severing at the end of the week.  It has begun to seem like a strange dream.

I have had other bosses, and if they had let me go, I would have known exactly why.  In the past, I have been told the  ways I'm not a good match for my position.  But in my current job, in the past 6 months, I had reason to think that people above me were pleased with my performance.  So it's odd to be let go the way that I was.  I don't feel anger or bitterness or even sadness; after all, I spent much of 2021 being told my job would end.  But I do feel a mild curiosity about my own performance and about the future of the campus.

Here we are on a Monday, the first Monday since 1998 that I don't have to leave the house to go to work at a job.  Even during pandemic lockdown, we were still going to the office, all 5 of us who were left.  Of course, I still have work to do:  seminary classes, online classes that I'm teaching, and the chores of daily living.  But as I've written before, not going to an office will free up a lot of time.

I look at my closet, and I wonder if I should keep all these clothes and shoes.  I will not be doing office work for the foreseeable future.  I am planning to go to DC in August to do in-person seminary work, so I'm not likely to need most of these clothes in the next few years, and perhaps never again.  It is time to purge!  

I will keep my jewelry, even though I don't wear jewelry when I'm working from home.

I am thinking about other things that will change.  I will have more time for my morning walks.  I could also go for a walk at other points in the day.  I will have more time for all sorts of endeavors:  creative work, seminary studies, reading, napping.

I will need to pay attention to my food.  One of the advantages of structured week days is that I take lunch and veggie snacks and homemade bread for my food for the day.  On the week-ends at home, my good habits often fall by the wayside, but I don't worry too much about it, because I know I'm headed back to the office.  Now I will need to be intentional.

Maybe I will model my eating after my grandparents and have the big meal of the day at noon.

In short, all sorts of possibilities have opened up, from the less consequential, like meal times, to the more substantial, like the increased course load I could do as soon as May (I could go to Wesley for Maymester!).  I look forward to seeing where this all takes me.