7:30 AM on June 1
Fourteen years ago, I started my first professional, full-time job. I was 26 years old, and had just moved to California after graduating with my master's and spending what seemed like countless years in a (comparatively) footloose and fancy-free student lifestyle. The student life I had led had been characterized by deadlines of hyper-inflated importance, odd hours, hastily-arranged lunches and coffee dates and happy hours with friends, late nights of reading boring technical literature, and unending anxiety about grades. It was grueling and stressful and, in hindsight, absolutely glorious for the freedom it gave me without my realizing it.
I don't remember what I wore on my first day of work; I don't remember if I had first day jitters. I do remember realizing, very early in my day, that my boss was a bit of a mercurial and moody person; I remember eating my lunch in the stuffy attic of the old Carnegie part of the library; I remember the little thrill of pride and glee I got when I answered my first basic reference question. And I remember returning to my empty, lonely, overpriced apartment that night, completely fucking exhausted.
Today, I start back to work after the longest stretch of relative freedom I've ever experienced in my adult life. While the last good few weeks I've spent glued to my laptop at my kitchen table for unending odd hours, including evening and weekends, returning to the library building and putting in up to 8.5 hours a day in there is going to be a bit of a shock to the system? Will I be as exhausted as I was on that summer day, 14 years ago?
******************************************************************************
6:30 PM on June 1
Oh my god my poor feet.
I'll be sleeping the sleep of the blameless tonight.
No comments:
Post a Comment