Maybe others can relate to this: Lately, I’ve been feeling like color is slowly seeping in to a dark, gray, landscape and I’m a plant getting ready to bloom. Seasonal changes aside, the first two years of the pandemic, especially working in the healthcare / health and wellness industry, have been numbing. I’m actually planning trips again, and looking forward to new ventures. Hermits on the mountain in groups of people – six feet apart when possible, that’s how I think all of this feels.

(I could speak about masking in a different context as a neurodivergent person, and how I laugh at the idea that a piece of fabric worn for 30 minutes is somehow oppressive given what society demands of me both in and out of pandemics, but I think that’s a different essay deserving of its own space.)

And we’ve all become reflective as a result. What matters in life to us as individuals? What haven’t we done that we want to still do? Are we doing work that feeds our soul and lets us live after the day is done, or not? It’s not the great resignation, in my mind, it’s an evaluation. A measuring stick. Anubis holding the scales of your heart with a leaden feather to offset. Is your heart light enough?

For so many people, it isn’t, and the question then becomes: how do I fix it? Is the answer unionizing at a current workplace to demand better treatment, better pay? Is it seeking another career, another career field? Comfort may not be enough. Change may be the answer. That is the answer that many people are reaching. Taking work out off its pedestal, and sizing it down in importance, is the first answer I’ve arrived at. I prefer life in proper balance over “work/life balance”. I work to pay my bills and hopefully give me some sense of appropriate satisfaction, not to be the center of my life. If anyone’s eulogy for me focuses on my job, I’ve not lived life.

To correct this unhealthy imbalance, I’ve started with small steps, opening toward the light a petal at a time. I’m taking my first flight ever at a much later age than most achieve this goal to visit friends whose absence in my life has been painful. I moved to somewhere with at least a somewhat functioning public transit system that goes to the airport for a reason. I am going to make use of it, starting this year. Two trips this year, one for friends, one for family. Next year, who knows?