PBW: Chasing Sunshine

I've reached a breaking point of sorts with work. Everyone is stressed and overwhelmed by the new workload and organizational structure, and for a few weeks I've been steadily working late, missing the gym some nights, and missing the sun every day.

No more.

Something has snapped inside. With more work, I would expect to lie awake at night even more, and check my e-mail from home even more. I did that for a bit too, but as the weather warms and the days grow longer, I find myself not only leaving work earlier, but leaving it behind. From 9(ish) to six I'll worry about work, and I will get it done. I always do. Speaking about the importance of vacation days, FawnDoo recently said, “Time off reminds me that I work to live, not the other way around, which is a trap I fall into all too easily.” I can very much relate to the sentiment. FawnDoo goes on to say how a day off without the structure of a work schedule does funny things to time. Weekends certainly fly by faster and faster for me and when I do extend them, it barely makes a difference. A three-day weekend sometimes makes that first day back at work worse than any Monday. I took off THIS Monday, and yesterday morning was a hectic struggle to respond to e-mail requests, reprint pages I had printed on Friday for a meeting that changed due to some of those e-mails, and try to get my head back in to a work mindset. The trap I fall in to with a big workload is that when I don't know what to do first, I often wind up doing nothing. I wander around. I talk to my friends. I can't focus like I could when I was younger.

Yet, yesterday wasn't so bad, and by the afternoon, things were going more than smoothly. I was done with work by 5:30, had a good workout in the gym, and managed to drive home while the sun was still up.

The sun and the sand and the sea have all been beckoning, stronger and stronger. I'm drawn to these open places, and reminded of a time when a day off DIDN'T mean sitting in the dark looking at a computer. I enjoy the work I do even if the volume bothers me. I enjoy surfing the web and watching DVDs when I'm home. The end result of the similarities between my work and my play is that I spend roughly 12-14 hours a day in front of a computer or television screen, many of those hours in the dark or in dim lighting. I place value on the sun and deprived of it for so long, I risk ”losing my powers.”

I want to be outside as much as possible. I took Monday off, and I was either at the beach or in the yard every day. Three days felt like six, but in a good way. Doing more than sitting in my room waiting to have work to go to again didn't accelerate time. In some cases it slowed it down. On Monday, I picked up a digital camera. It was inexpensive and not the best, but good for me starting out and a gift card I had covered it. I still need to learn the adjustments for indoor photos and get used to a delay on it, but it's pretty good for outdoor photos. Which brings us, in my trademark long-winded manner, to a new weekly feature on the NOI: Photo Blog Wednesdays! Each week I'll pick a pic to share and write about. With a new toy and more to say than can be encompassed in one photo, this week I have three to share:


This idea is blatantly stolen from FawnDoo, even if the neatness isn't. Maybe at some point we'll see my (slightly) neater set up at the office. In the context of tonight's post though, this shot illustrates my normal view when I'm not at work, as well as how bad this camera(or the photographer) is indoors.


Literally, Monday was a walk in the park. This was a really cool tree I saw.


This is what I saw lying on the beach. I made it my desktop pattern at work Tuesday. It's definitely not the same as being there. Lying on my back listening to waves crash, looking up at a cloudless blue sky, I was more relaxed and at peace than I have been in a long time.

I showed these and other photos to some of my coworkers, but jaded by the system they only mocked me. A man I spoke with at a wake the other day talked about how relaxed Europeans are compared to Americans, and even on vacation they're in a rush. He was on a tour and the bus stopped at a café, and everyone immediately began grumbling, wanting to get back to the hotel by a certain time, to adhere to a schedule. The schedule isn't going anywhere. Life IS.

Two days in a row now I've taken the long way home, which takes me along the shoreline in time to catch the sunset. Work won't get any easier, and soon I'll be starting up my side musical jobs on weekends and have even less of these moments to myself. So whenever the opportunity arises, I will be chasing the sunshine.