My last day of work was a Saturday. Sunday and Monday would have been days off anyway, which made Tuesday my first day of post-work life. I had an opportunity to join three other local women in a foray to a metro council meeting, where we were supporting a project to connect the parks on the Highland Rim with a major greenway. The parks group was all wearing green. And since I always had hats and bandanas in my car, as many food workers do, I offered up a green bandana in case anyone needed an extra boost of green.
I have since cleaned the car of the hat collection, although there’s probably one or two still in the trunk. There’s also an old discolored winter jacket there, used for scooping ice cream in the walk-in freezer. I think I can safely ditch it now.
The entire parks group posed for pictures outside the courthouse building, sharing displays and short speeches, all clad in green. When we went in, the four of us found seats together. I recall thinking that these were my friends now, not the people I'd been seeing daily. We liked each other more than people who are thrown together by work. There were times when I really liked the crew I had worked with, but the bulk of the people who worked with me by the time I left were first of all, younger, but also not remotely intellectual. They liked country music radio, which we listened to a lot. Politically, they were by and large conservative, which I’m not. And then there was a narcissist who played ugly middle-schoolish head games. So while I liked most of the people, especially the two event managers (who were women about my age), it wasn’t an ideal fit. I made the best of it, but it was sometimes lonely.
Metro council meetings in Davidson County are a bit of a zoo. For one thing, our council has 40 reps, which is huge. Meetings sometimes go past midnight. Still in the work mindset, I was impatient to get started, and had to keep reminding myself that I didn’t have to get up and go to work the next morning. I wasn’t wasting time that I needed for laundry or bill paying or my etsy business or sleeping, wasn’t squandering time that could be spent with my puppies and my husband. There would be a tomorrow. I could spend time supporting a cause I believed in with people I liked, and still have time to live. It wasn’t a tradeoff anymore.
Perhaps that is the biggest gift. Time. Time to build friendships. Time for tomorrow.
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