I feel like I haven’t written in the journal for a long time, although apparently only a few days have passed. Today was a good day. I woke early, by 5:30AM, after a decent night’s sleep, then played basketball and lifted weights. After that I hung out with the boys for a while before they left for school. I dug the lawn mower out of the garage and cut the grass for the first time this year. The yard isn’t anywhere close to presentable, but well, I guess we’re on our way. I had to fuck around with the edger for a while before I got the device running, but eventually that sucker worked as well. Oh, I also drove to Home Depot and bought new solar lights. I installed four along the side of the house and two near the front. They look great, a bright white glow as opposed to the previous lights’ (all of which are broken) yellow. I had planned on working on my dissertation’s last chapter, but my advisor didn’t reply to a couple of my questions until mid-afternoon, and what the hell, I’m mainly in the revision stage, so fuck it, I blew off the work for the day. A colleague and I conducted a conference call in the early afternoon before I graded some lesson plans. After the boys arrived home I ate dinner (pizza, but I didn’t scarf as much as usual) while they played with some friends out back. Since nothing much was happening I drove my bike over to the bike shop for a tune-up. Later M and I watched “Scrubs” and earlier we watched “The Office”. Oh, N and I read books together while I let the older boys stay up to watch some high school musical special concert on Disney. N and I had fun. His learning is coming along well, too. Tonight he read off the letters in “not” and asked what they spelled. Nice work. I was pissed off, after the other boys were asleep, because I can’t find my copy of “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle”. Where the fuck is it? I’ve been losing things a lot lately. I’m not sure why.
James sent an email earlier in the week with a message, simply put, that “Your friends at work are not your friends”. I find this concept intriguing and promising. I’ve been working (pun intended) hard to separate myself from work while I’m at home. I’m not checking email as often. A colleague of mine also worked through a graphic through which I can decide, consciously, to make other’s opinions less important. I’m practicing. It’s working. Now, I have one, maybe two good friends at work, but other than that, no, those people aren’t important. I also understand that I have what a friend and I call the “sweet deal” at my job, e.g. I can take Fridays off with impunity, but none of that matters if I’m not happy or I’m over-invested. I worry about quitting, though, because the education field is so tight. I’d hate to move my children, since they’re doing so well in their schools at the moment, and my wife seems happy here. If I can reframe work as less important then I won’t need to worry about that as much. See what I mean? I’m not interested in looking back at my life in thirty years and thinking I worked a lot.
Ok, this should be a good weekend. More later. Good night.