I won't be going on holiday tomorrow, but for happy reasons. Think I've found a workable solution to my work/study situation, so need to hang around to complete some paperwork.
After a day of anguish yesterday, going round and round in circles trying and failing yet again to come to a decison that didn't feel like the absolute end of the world, in the evening I wrote my manager a long, despairing email.
After sending it I realised I had eaten only a cinnamon bagel and a Welsh cake all day, which probably hadn't helped with the despair. I'd been in such turmoil I hadn't felt hungry.
Thinking about the cringeworthy stuff I'd put in the email kept me awake, until I finally got up at 1.30am and tried to recall it. That didn't work, so I got up at 7am and sent her another, simpler, email apologising for the first: "The decision I need to make feels like frying pan/fire, and I don't know what to do for the best."
Then I made myself a hearty vegan fishfinger sandwich breakfast, and went out to keep busy well away from the inbox so I didn't sit at home fretting waiting for her to reply.
Bless her kind heart - when I got home there was the nicest email ever, saying if I wanted to reduce my hours down to the minimum of nine hours a week that would be straightforward and she could even make it happen before I'm due back in September. I'd imagined in my stupid head that this process would take three months at least and I'd be floundering with full time work on top of full time study until Christmas.
I know in my heart of hearts I don't really want to go back to the job OR the degree (I want to travel and generally have a nice time), but the difficulty - difficulty? sheer terror - of trying to decide what to do these last few weeks, and the relief I felt when she gave me this option, makes me think I've made an appropriate decision for now.
(There's also the small matter of an ugly pandemic to keep the travel plans on hold.)
I used to be able to embark on new lives with barely a backward glance. This current decision should have been much easier to make, so I suspect the difficulty was simply not being ready for a big life change just yet. The last 18 months have been horrendous, and for now I want a familiar and predictable routine, some stability, IRL interactions with actual humans, even, to help me regroup and rebalance. I do not want to lose my flat, which, if I resigned and then the degree went tits up, would have been a possibility.
Time will tell if I can pull off work and studying. But nothing's forever and I can change my mind again if I need to. For now, the pressure's gone, and I'm quietly bumbling around getting ready to go on holiday on Thursday. I'm even looking forward to it.
Today's Photo: A Room With A Moo
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