Tonight I am exhausted. On the one hand it’s Wednesday, “hump day” as it’s often called, meaning that it’s in the middle of the work week with only two more days until the weekend. From my vantage point this evening, it has already felt like a really long week with more really long days ahead. I have all day meetings on Friday, including an evening event, and a conference on Saturday that I expect to last from early morning until early evening. I am sorting out how to take care of my dog in the midst of this and how to keep my energy level up for the next several days. In spite of all of this, as well as the consequent drama that seems to bubble up from a variety of places at work, I am exceedingly grateful to be working, and not just for the fact of being employed but to be where I am doing what I am doing.
I will hasten to add that my workplace and situation are far from ideal in some fairly practical ways: there’s plenty I could complain about and be justified in it. But for the most part the opportunities and positives far outweigh the challenges and the negatives. I do, however, have moments when I want to run screaming from the various meetings and appointments that sometimes clog my calendar and mind, hindering my performance of actual work. Nonetheless, the meetings are often necessary evils and there doesn’t appear to be an end in sight anyway.
As tired as I am at the end of days like this, I am so grateful that this exhaustion emerges from my having taxed my mental faculties working on interesting, complex, and challenging issues that require me to do my most creative and strategic thinking. This weariness comes from the political wrangling, delicate dancing through personalities and interpersonal dynamics, juggling of budgets and finances and deadlines. It’s crazymaking. But I can also think back to exhaustion associated with packing up and moving having lost a job and a significant relationship and the painful and angst-filled uncertainty of not having steady employment to support myself and my family. There’s exhaustion and there’s exhaustion. The physical manifestations might appear quite similar, but the origins and the severity of the circumstances that bring it on are quite different.
It’s going to be a demanding couple of days ahead. (I hope my blog doesn’t suffer too much from the late nights I expect I’ll have between now and Sunday.) Demanding but good. My task this week is to remember to breathe, relax, be in the moment as best I can, remain calm and keep moving. At a meeting this morning I found myself saying, “What am I doing? I really just want to go be a farmer!” It’s a sentiment I express from time to time, questioning my sanity in doing work that sometimes seems endless, hopeless, and undervalued. Part of my heart yearns for the relative simplicity and apolitical practice of raising crops and livestock, tending to the things of nature, land, water and sun. Then I come back to reality.
There is a time for rest. I don’t think that time is right now, not yet, at least not for me in what I am being called upon to do. So while it’s important to take a breather every now and then, now isn’t the time to take a break or retire or take a vacation. Right now is a time to keep moving and in the meantime doing those things to take care of myself in the midst of the activity. There’s an writing that says, “Let’s not get weary of doing what is good, for at the right time we will reap a harvest—if we do not give up.” So while I have the energy, I’ll keep at it.
So for tonight I’ll take my rest, rising tomorrow to start it up again. It’s what I do, it’s what so very many have done for generations: worked to make the world a better place. It might sound corny, but it’s true. I am grateful not only to have work, but to know that my work matters. And for that I am truly grateful.
