Playing Catch-Up

On Summer and Stability

Jul 31, 2023

Hello friends. It’s been a bit, and I’ll admit that’s mostly because summer is… hard. It’s a good hard! It’s hard like packing the right clothes for vacation is hard, or putting down a really good book so you can sleep is hard. It’s hard like calling your therapist and saying, “Joanna, it happened again,” when it did indeed happen again. The good kind of hard.

My summer has included a lot of wonderful things, and so today, I thought I’d tell you about some of them, and include some photos of our various activities. I hope you like terrible scenery pictures!

This summer, I took three weeks off work for vacation. Yes, I know that sounds wild, it sounded wild to me too while I was planning it. The thing is, I never had three weeks worth of vacation at TAMUC, despite how long I worked there, because I was constantly using my vacation time as sick days. Even when I moved across the country, multiple times, I only ever used a few days of vacation to cover my actual driving time. Combine that with teaching part time on top of my actual full time job, and it meant that even when I had some time off, I rarely ended up just not working.

This vacation, I did not work. I did a little writing, a few household chores, spent time with Jack… but I didn’t do anything that could really be termed work, and it helped so much.

Part of that vacation time included a brief trip upstate, to Lake George, NY.

It was grey, windy, rainy, and gross for most of our 4-day trip. But for one glorious day, the sun shone out beautifully, and we got to swim in the pool, lounge by the lake, Emma went kayaking, and we ate barbecue on a fancy covered patio. When it rained, we played a board game in the motel, and went to an indoor water park. When it drizzled, we walked around the little downtown area, ducked into shops and under awnings, to experience the lake country’s beauty despite the… well, wet.

A collection of 9 images depicting: the shoreline of Lake George including a lighthouse and steamboat; a beautiful sunset with glowing pink clouds over the lake, being photographed from a deck behind a woman with long, wet hair who is photographing the same clouds; the lake on a sunny day with water sparkling in front of low mountains; a duck looking at the camera from a sandy beach; a young teenage boy sitting at a table with a small town street in the background; the same teenage boy wearing a wet swimsuit, sitting astride a bear statue at an indoor water park; the same teenage boy sitting with his feet up in his chair on the deck by the lake, wearing a coat and headphones as he stairs at his phone; a street view of the small downtown area with mountains rising in the background; pink, fluffy, glowing clouds over the lake at sunset. — Lake George Vacation Photos

Jack, my thirteen-year-old son, seems to get bigger every time I look at him, but he’s still eager to play games with us, to go on adventures, and even to share the details of his internal life: what games he’s obsessing over; what jokes his favorite podcast host told today; what his favorite Pokemon’s names are. Sharing this time with him was more valuable than any I’ve spent in a long time, and reminded me why I have a full time job to begin with.

Could I cobble together a living from contract work, writing gigs, content creation, teaching…? Maybe. It’s a strange world, and stranger things have been done. But with Jack still happy to spend time with me, the freedom of stability (and health insurance, and vacation time, and even my coworkers) is too tempting to resist.

Remind me of this when October arrives and I’ve forgotten the smell of chlorine, the taste of street fair food, the feeling of being soaked in sweat in Central Park while I take in a delicious performance.

I’ll need it.

XOXO,

Anne

Playing Catch-Up

On Summer and Stability

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