Greener Grass

I made a discovery yesterday: Coming back to work after a lovely relaxing vacation always stinks.

I used to think that was only true in the teaching field. I hated taking sick days, because it meant typing sub plans the night before, organizing all my stuff for the other teacher, and then cleaning up the mess anyway. (Subs almost never seem to accomplish what you want them to. Maybe my expectati0ns were too high, I don't know. But I can count on my hand the number of times I have walked into my classroom after a sick day and found the my plans actually done.) I thought that it must be better with a nine-to-five job.

But it's not. I mean, not having to make sub plans is great, let me tell you. Before leaving for the beach, I basically stacked my papers on my desk and walked out the door. But coming back was just as rough as always, in some ways. Sure, there aren't 25 eight-year-olds clamoring for my attention, tattling on one another, telling tales of how rotten everyone was the day before. But there was still the sense of being behind the game, having missed something. There was still a mountain of new work on my desk, new tasks to remember and appointments to keep.

Our friend J picked us up from the airport on Wednesday. We started talking about work - about Vid's work being fun, in particular. I made a crack that I wanted to find a job that was fun all the time. Then J reminded me of something important: aiming to find a job that was so much fun it didn't feel like work ever was basically the same as desiring industry pre-Fall. He's right, you know.

Work is work. No matter how much fun it can be most of the time, it's still going to feel gross at times. Especially compared to a trip to the beach.