Relative Something

Back to the grind and I am ambivalent about reclaiming my role in the work-world. Imagine that.

My vacation week of cycling was good. It was a return to an old routine I am familiar with, having participated many times before, however, it felt different for me, compared to previous years. Something about that feeling is influencing my motivation about writing about the trip. It is possible that the simple difference of having not written a journal each day, is part of it. But I think there is more.

I think it is also a function of living away from my wife, of having my home artificially staged to look good for showing, of the looming possibility that my home will sell when I have nowhere to go.

I told the story of Cyndie living and working in Boston, and our dream of selling our home to buy rural horse property, so many times on the bike trip that the sound of my own telling began to ripple my perceptions of our dream. I was on vacation from it all, but I was frequently re-affirming the plan. It was both invigorating, and unsettling.

On the Friday a week ago, when I was completing my packing for the bike trip, and about to be picked up for the drive to the starting town, I finally identified the disturbing smell that was increasingly making itself known in my house. A couple of days before, I walked into the house and thought I noticed the faint smell of something that resembled a dirty diaper.

I checked the garbage, the refrigerator, and even the plants in the kitchen window. It was definitely an organic smell. Friday, it became strong enough to be obvious. There was a dead mouse somewhere in the house. I was just about to close up the house for a week, making it available for showings the whole time I would be gone, and there was a dead mouse stinking to high heaven.

The first feedback that came in was pretty brutal. By the time I got home on Saturday, the smell was no longer obvious, but during the week, I had to reconcile that I was not in control of that situation. It was, what it was.

Returning to work is what my reality is today. It is what it is. I’m hoping it will be a relatively gentle grind. I’m not feeling very much in control of the situation.

Here is a shot from the bike trip that tells a story from one of our rest stops…