Hands off the food. Hands off the wheel.
My husband was feeling sick and he tested positive for covid yesterday. We are both vaccinated (two shots no boosters.) So I am not particularly worried about him, though I am sorry he is suffering at the moment. And I am not testing, but I assume I have it and I am just asymptomatic. But what it also means is that neither one of us can go into work for the next week! And seriously, hooray!!!
My husband can’t do his job from home, but I ertainly can. I will still be working. Probably the same number of hours every day. But no hour long commute each way means more sleep, more personal time, and most importantly, more quality time with my husband. Maybe we can even eat a few meals together once he is feeling himself again.
I have been feeling burnt out over the past couple of weeks. I think Life knew I needed a break. I really like my job. I like it the way people like things they are great at. It gives me a lot of pride and self-esteem. It brings in good money. I don’t need or want to not work. But having work be the only thing in my life has been a struggle.
If you know me, you know I am very much *not* a workaholic. I am a perfectionist. And I am a hard worker. And I have lingering people pleasing tendencies from when I was in the food, but I always want to work less, not more. I am currently working 60 hour weeks, dreaming about the end of night shift, when I can probably get down to 50 hour weeks. And some day, when this job is over, maybe I can get myself a cushy 40 hour a week job! That would be living the dream!
A few weeks ago, my office got me a temp to help with the workload. She and her family had just moved back to Illinois from Tennessee, and she told me several jobs had fallen through on her in the weeks before she started with me. And that her fiancé had not been able to find work either. But the construction industry has a labor shortage right now. And the union has a program to get new people started, and potentially get them in the union down the line. Unions are often exclusive groups and getting in usually has a lot to do with who you know.
So my company got my temp’s fiancé a spot in the new program. And while her job with me will end when the night shift ends, she found out about how to get trained as a Safety Manager in the construction industry by our Safety Manager. In other words, in not getting all of those other jobs, not only did their family go from no jobs, to one job, to two jobs, she and her fiancé potentially gained two careers in construction, a field she didn’t know anything about until she got a temporary admin job on our construction site. And she said to me this week, “When they say ‘everything happens for a reason,’ I think this is what they mean.”
Putting boundaries around my eating taught me to stop fighting Life. It taught me that so many of the things I thought I wanted paled in comparison to the things Life wanted to give me. I’m certainly not happy my husband is sick. But I am also certainly not sorry that he gets a break from our brutal work schedule. And that I do too. So I trust that Life is right. And I can see that, and feel it in my heart, because my eating is under control. I’m still peddling, doing what I can to the best of my ability, but I am willing to take my hands off the wheel and let Life steer. And so far, with my hands off the food and my hands off the wheel, Life has not let me down.
onceafatgirl 