Many years ago, I attended a birthday party where for entertainment a woman read our fortunes. I stood in fascination as she described the lives and futures of various friends and family members. I could barely wait for my turn.
The woman did her card shuffle and looked at me with a sad smile. “You work,” she said softly.
“Yes,” I responded and waited for her to reveal some future travels or adventures as she had for everyone else.
She shook her head and glanced down at her cards again. “No. That’s all I see. You work. You work all the time. There’s nothing else that I see.”
Tears blinded my eyes as I moved off to the side for her to take the next person in line. I rounded up my husband, son, and his friend and told them I wanted to leave. I couldn’t get into the car fast enough. Sobs shook me the second I closed the car’s door.
“What’s wrong?” my husband asked.
“You heard what that woman said,” my words drowned by tears. “She saw nothing but work.”
That casual observation by a party entertainer punched me in the gut because it resounded with truth.
At that time, I taught high school English. I slipped into my classroom an hour early every morning and stayed almost as long most days. My evenings and weekends involved chipping away at an endless mountain of essays, journals, and projects that never dwindled no matter how many hours I graded. With the time that remained to my day, I did house and yard work. Rarely did I do anything just for pleasure.
Amazement filled me if I heard about friends taking off for evenings or weekends with “the girls.” How did they find the time? How could they simply leave their jobs and households for a few days at the beach? Guilt over spending that much money and time on myself would make the intended respite stressful for me. In my mind, I’d fret over all the stuff I wasn’t getting done.
Over the years, I don’t think I’ve learned how to play without donning a layer of guilt like a second skin. For the last two days, I’ve had no substitute jobs because the openings have been at high schools, middle schools, or schools that are too far from my home. This year, I limited myself to only doing elementary schools within a ten minute drive from my house. I grab jobs at the high school campus that’s walking distance from my house, too. Yesterday, when nothing opened up, I convinced myself that the budget hit wasn’t too bad. I changed out of my work clothes and found my rattiest t-shirt and oldest pair of shorts. I headed out to the back yard and did three hours of yard work. In other words, I worked.
With today off, it means a harder hit to my extra income. I almost talked myself into taking a slot at a middle school where I could possibly have a totally rotten day. I battled back and forth on the importance of the $78.65 I’ll net VS the Middle School Madness of students in May. I decided to stay home for a second day, but feel guilty about not taking that slot.
As I sit at keyboard, my mind drifts to the hedges out front. My work ethic primly points out, “You should use today to trim those bushes.”
Another voice, distant and faint, echoes in my memory. “You work. You work.”
Maybe today I’ll step away from my overdeveloped sense of responsibility and enjoy an unexpected and unplanned day off—and do nothing at all.
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| Watching acorns grow! |
Copyright 2019 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman
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