12 hours of liberty. 12 hours of rest. 12 hours of breath.

Want some whiskey in your water?
Sugar in your tea?
What’s all these crazy questions they’re askin’ me?
— “Mama Told Me (Not to Come)” by Three Dog Night

Well, it’s here. The day I’ve been waitin’ and holdin’ on for for a week.

My single day off in a string of six-day workweeks punctuated by extra hours and double shifts to cover for an abrupt employee departure and norovirus outages.

It’s a gyp of a day off really. Twelve hours max to myself.

Twelve hours to rest and recuperate from extreme fatigue and an exhausting two weeks.

Twelve hours to rest up for the next round, fortunately a return to a regular (5-day) week as they’ve got an employee to move over to dishwashing (liberating me from extra shifts).

Still, 12 hours ain’t a fucking lotta time for the rest and catch-up needing to be accomplished.

Because I’m strongly naturally organized, I rarely need lists. Yet with so much having gone unattended due to extraordinary job demands of late, I find myself with an actual list! Things to do springing to mind, big things, little things.

“Oh yes, I must go there. Oh yes, I must take care of that.” Last time I had a list of Things to Do was when I was escaping/departing Washington/Tacoma. Lots to do when you’re uprooting and exchanging a life with a promised conclusion of illness, homelessness and death beneath a bridge for a life of opportunity and a brighter future.

Yesterday, a work day, the weather was bright, sunny, dry, a tad nippy, ideal for tooling around town to Get Things Done.

So whaddya imagine today, my one day off, correction, my prized 12 hours of freedom look like?

hahah Righto! Suddenly: snow.

Accumulation’s only a half inch or so, nuthin’ to keep me indoors — tempting though it be with whiskey in my coffee and a good book to read — only trim the Things to Do list.

For those curious, why the repeated notation of 12 hours? Why the gypped day off? Because 12 hours are the hours between arising from bed (after catching up on severely-needed sleep) to returning — for tomorrow I must rise before the fucking dawn for the early shift!

Do I sound disgruntled? You don’t know the half of it! I’m exhausted. Fatigued. Wearied by shifts wholly contrary to my nature/rhythms. Grateful and glad to be working, absolutely … ‘specially after three years of futile job-hunting … you try it and you too would be kissing the very ground, no matter how filthy, from which your paycheck arrives!

However, truth is truth, there’s no escaping it, only denying it. For all its good points (and there are many), this job isn’t the right one by my own measure or that of the divine, purpose and path.

It’s a stopgap.

Nothing more and nothing else; of that I remind myself frequently, if for no other reason than to ease self-loathing risen from a station so low and path misdirected and mistaken.

And here’s the real point/message (beyond a life presently wholly out of balance and to the extent that prior to these 12 precious hours I hadn’t the time or energy to tap out a few overdue emails or cards!):

(Life) Time’s running short and I’m wastin’ it.

With every day, hour and minute spent in menial labor (which, dammit, I’m way too good at!), I’m wasting my talents, skills, experience, gifts, abilities and ambitions, which reside somewheres deep in the recesses of soul and psyche, doing anything BUT what I’m meant to do, (divinely) agreed to do and need to do in this lifetime.

Purposeful work, work with purpose, I’m nuthin’ if not of that cloth. All the rest is a lie, a lesson and a need to survive (which is no lie).

My life’s going down the drain — pun intended — with every passing tiring day where I tirelessly give my very best, through the exhaustion and fatigue, at a job that’s not of me.

So much to recover and restore … it’s overwhelming and sometimes so so depressing to contemplate.

On a happier note, it’s my 12 hours of leave and I gets to drink whiskey in my coffee at 1:03 p.m. Can’t do that at the job, ya know.

I like days off. I adore them! Feels terrific to rest … listen to classical music … breathe. Just. Breathe.

If only for 12 hours.

(:-( )

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