Leisure and vacation really don’t exist. Sure I get as much time off as anyone else with a fulltime job (and indeed I have accrued kind of a massive amount of paid time off, since I didn’t use much of any allotted to me in 2020 when we shut down), but any time away from work cannot be described as leisure. It’s 100% recovery, and bracing for the next day. Also, there is an even more profound money crunch this summer.
On Monday, May 23, my husband was fired from his position. We both worked…”worked”, so weird to say it in past-tense…for the same company. Without getting into it, I am piecing together that someone with an agenda against him, me, or both of us, took a middling piece of scandal to our board, and in their conservative Christian wisdom, decided he did more harm to the company’s image than the years and years of good he gave them. As it turned out, I had a pre-planned week and a half span scheduled off, From June 1-11. This time at home, while it was supposed to be relaxing and fun, was sad, and exhausting. Caring for someone you love as they go through depression, panic attacks, and utter despair can really take its toll. Being the strong person so that they can melt for a little while…it’s a lot of work and is in no way leisurely. Then my completely out-of-touch supervisor had the gall to ask me “so, did you have a good time off?” on my first day back. Never have I wanted to burn something to the ground more. She is at best completely oblivious and tone-deaf, or at worst openly malicious. I have lost every bit of respect for that company, and any drive to help make it a more successful, better entity for the community.
In the meantime, he has begun working for our friends in their small business here in town. They hope that he can begin generating more revenue for them, and his first couple of weeks there were promising. But he desperately needs to regain health insurance. I don’t know if a long-term future here is viable anymore (which could very well be what the person(s) that got him fired wanted). I just re-upped our lease until July, ’23. That will give me enough time to pay off a couple of things and save enough to move. If his new position doesn’t take off in a profound way in the next year, we will likely have to relocate. If my 40 hours/week at that job are akin to being lit on fire, then my weekends, holidays, and time off are someone nearby rolling me around, patting me down with a blanket, and smearing on aloe. I really don’t care what I do on my own time, just as long as I am not there.
Last year, in 2021, after not going anywhere for over a year and a half, we did a few road trips. A long weekend in Cleveland. The Origins gaming convention in Columbus. And a week-long road trip to the Upper Midwest (Minneapolis, Fargo, Omaha). It was fun, but some drama was going on back at home that took my mind out of the vacation spirit. That, and I found out later that hubs racked up a TON of credit card debt doing these trips, so really, they could have gone without being done. He says he planned them to help me be happy, but it only made the situation worse. We have ever since been trying to no avail to pay down these credit cards. I try to maintain a sense of social connection, as we have a couple of weekly game nights regularly. And while they are pleasant, and the highlights of my week, I increasingly see them for what they are: a distraction from how my life really is.
I have this list of things to do that I “should” find entertaining, or worthwhile, but they seem like chores now…reading books, continuing my movie-watching challenge, doing the initial legwork for running a new D&D story. I start to do one of those things and after 15 minutes or so I get sick of not getting anything else done, and quit it. More often than not I end up spending these gloriously bright and sunny days crouched in my dark apartment, wasting away whole days searching through garbage on YouTube. Time off gives me time to think, and I don’t like that. I think a ton about how there is no future. At best I can hope to wind out the clock like I’m doing now until I get somewhere in my mid 60s, then just keel over one day. Of course that is just the “me having a bad day” talking. Other times, I am very focused on paying off my car by the end of the year, so I can then save that money for the potential of having to relocate to find my hubby a job. By the time our lease is up again in 13 months, I will be 45, and I will absolutely need to know “our final answer” by then. I am sick of this holding pattern, not knowing where our forever town is. I can’t do it anymore. There are already a couple of potential landing places; a friend and a relative both might say that we can crash land there with them if we have to. And both of those cities are way bigger and full of potential than here. I work this coming Saturday, so that means I get a weekday off this week.
I so look forward to those days, where I can be utterly away from anyone else that would make my week what it already is otherwise. I plan on camping out at The Cup or somewhere, having a decent breakfast, and finishing a book.?
…so of course I am writing this at 10pm on a Sunday night…with Monday morning staring me in the face,?