bogeyandruby

Like many people who work regular full-time hours, Monday through Friday, I was never a fan of Sunday evenings. For that reason, when I had the opportunity to work a modified full-time schedule with every other Monday off, I took it.

You’d be right to expect that a Sunday evening before a Monday off would feel like a jackpot two Saturdays in a row, but the truth is, it didn’t feel like that at all. Instead, Sunday before Monday off felt like doom and gloom on simmer, and Monday evening felt like Sunday with the volume-up.

I wondered if I might feel less stressed if I was off every second Friday instead of Mondays, but the reality is, many of the services I might be inclined to book on a day off, apart from maybe the hairdressers, would likely be closed on Friday or at least only offer reduced services. It simply wasn’t practical.

Now I am semi-retired and only work Tuesdays and Thursdays. Even with this reduced schedule though, I am still preoccupied on Sundays and even more anxious on Monday evenings.

I thought about all this today, exceptionally working Monday instead of Tuesday, due to Christmas being on a Thursday this year. There was the usual wind-up the evening before and I had a very busy day today with home visits spread all over the territory.

As I drove to my first home care client, 16 km away from my starting point, I asked Siri to play Vince Guaraldi on car play. It’s pretty hard to stay in a funk listening to this version of Peppermint Patty. It was a cold day, minus eleven Celsius, so I put the seat and steering wheel warmer on, luxuries I insisted on when I bought this car, as I suffer from Raynaud’s disease. Before long I was warm and toasty. The last five kilometres of my route was a long stretch of road that I had to myself. It felt like a mini road trip with a great soundtrack and kitschy roadside Christmas decorations to keep me company. If not purely zen, I was pretty dang calm.

It was the first time I was seeing this client and to my delight, she had two black kittens, brothers. We are supposed to ask the clients to secure their animals during our visits, for safety concerns, mainly ours, but if the pets are well-behaved, I let them stay. For me, it is a work perk, a form of pet therapy, if you will.

On the way to my next client, I retraced that same long road with Vince competing with Google maps. I noticed an older woman, dressed for a walk in the cold, trudging towards me on my side of the road. She wasn’t walking quickly but by her body slant, I could tell she was walking against the wind and uphill. I ventured she was practicing her daily constitution in order to avoid a visit from the local home care physio.

I passed some other walkers, another senior lady in a very puffy red coat the shape of a Christmas tree, her red knitted cap, similarly triangular, secured with a chin strap, making her look a bit like an aging teletubbie. There were youngsters waiting at bus stops, perhaps on their way to the mall to catch up on Christmas shopping or just to hang out with friends. I passed our old offices, various landmarks, the old Chinese restaurant that is now someone’s residence, a soft ice cream stand boarded up for the winter, the new REM station (where I used to catch the train to university), churches, a mosque, synagogues, the local Sikh gurudwara, a Hindu temple and lots and lots of Christmas inflatables. I know all the speed limits by heart, the school zones, short cuts and scenic routes.

Indeed, I have travelled these familiar roads for work over the past twenty-nine years, the time and space between clients often spent rushing through traffic when late for the next visit, planning interventions, multi-tasking thanks to blue-tooth connections, white-knuckle driving through bad weather, etc. Today, there was none of that stress. Thanks to the two-week break for Christmas and New Years, there was no traffic and I was on time for all my clients, even early for some. Vince produced enough music in his short lifespan to play through my entire day.

I even took a lunch break for a change, meeting up for coffee with a dear friend who was in town to celebrate the Winter Solstice with her family.

My point is, it is all about gratitude. That is what changes a negative mindset. It may be a piece of music on your radio or an unexpected connection with a client and their kittens, or a familiar road that evokes a happy memory.

I’m not sure how many more Sundays and Mondays I will waste worrying about work. They wear you down after a while, even when you only work part time.

I will miss the days like this on the road though, when that silver thread winds itself through my route and my heart.