Waking up to real life

But there are downsides which I’m having to come to terms with. Firstly, I never quite understood before quite how much time working full-time takes up.

Essentially, I get up in the morning, go to work, work, go home, and fall asleep. I can’t just swan over to a friend’s for lunch, or book a doctor’s appointment for whenever I feel like, or read whenever I want, or watch endless Netflix whenever I want, or snooze whenever I want.

I have to be in a place, alert and focused, communicating with strangers and doing stuff on a schedule dictated by other people.

This most likely seems obvious to anyone who’s been in the workforce for longer than three months but for me it’s a major shock to the system. I relied on my 3pm schluffs over the summer. Now they are no more. 

But despite all this, having a job isn’t something that depresses me – yet. Sometimes I have to be at work at 7am, but waking up in the dark and walking through the misty, silent streets between frosted cars and my breath fogging in the streetlamps is exciting.

It’s something that I wouldn’t experience otherwise, but it reminds me of rowing at university, when I’d have to be out before sunrise but really it was a treat, a moment when I felt like I had a purpose whilst everyone else slept.

Sometimes I drink three cups of tea during my lunch break to get myself through the afternoon, but then the hyper, bouncing buzz I feel makes me dance to whatever unsatisfying playlist we have as background music and people laugh, and that’s nice. And sometimes I recommend a book to someone that they wouldn’t otherwise have read, and even if I never find out what they thought of it, the possibility that they might like it is exciting.

Peaks and troughs, I suppose. At every stage in life there are things we like and things we don’t. I like having more money to go to the pub. I don’t like having less time to go to the pub. Win some, lose some. It could be a lot worse. But I still have zero energy to get myself to shul on Friday night.

I guess that’s just something I’ll have to continue feeling guilty about.