Around Christmas people start thinking about New Year’s resolutions. At least around here, the most popular are things like “quit smoking”, “learn English”, “lose weight”, “find a new job”, “stop flirting with my neighbor”, “learn how to cook” etc.
I’ve never been quite good at resolutions, and mostly it’s because I tend to choose hard things. Of the above, I’d choose “lose weight”. Well, I love food. And I love eating. How can I spend a year not eating? I can’t. So, year after year, I fail.
That’s why this year I’ve decided to come up with some positive resolutions. Actually, positive resolution, since I only have one. Only one thing that I want to do for the whole 2010: Enjoy what I have.
I spent most of the last 18 months wishing I had an “office job”. Complaining about being a freelancer who works from home and has very little work. Wishing I had some steady income. Wishing I could wear nice clothes to work instead of my boyfriend’s t-shirts.
Suddenly, not long ago, a friend from college called me. There was a possibility that they’ll be looking for someone in her office. Would I be up for it? Yes!!! Of course!!! How could I not? I’d love to!! So she gave her boss my CV. She spoke very highly of me. Her boss agreed to interview me. Two weeks after the interview (and after me sending him an email wondering about how had the interview gone) he sent me the offer with all the details. And I knew it wasn’t right. I knew I couldn’t take it. It was very little money. It was 8 hours of work (at least, bc apparently there are days when hours just don’t matter… and this is the boss who told me, not my friend) plus one hour for lunch plus 10 minutes on a bus, over an hour on a train and 15 minutes on the underground (plus the time waiting in between). In the end, it meant that I’d be out of the house from 7AM until 8PM if everything went well.
My friend is very happy with her job and loves it, but I know I’d never be able to keep up with not being home ever, not seeing Eric more than 2 hours a day, having to forget about the masters I’ve started (and the money I’ve paid for it), about German lessons…
It was too high a price to pay for me. So I said no.
Now I know my friend is not happy about it. I wrote to her before I told “the boss”, I told her I hadn’t decided it lightly, I explained all my reasons and told her how I wished this wouldn’t change anything between us. This was three days ago, and I still haven’t heard from her. But I know I’ve made the right decision for me, and I know I’d regret taking the job after the first week in it.
Now, back to the point. At 8AM this morning I informed “the boss” that I wouldn’t be joining his company. And I realized how much I value being home during the day, being able to cook, to go have a coffee with a friend on a slow morning, to sit on the sunny corner of the living room and work with my laptop there, to sip a cup of fresh coffee, to have a very quite place to be… And it dawned on me. I hadn’t been enjoying all this, because I though I needed something different. But after realizing that this is what I really want, I decided to love it. And that’s how I came up with my resolution. And, since this is the first day that I’ve consciously decided that this is where I want to be, this is the first day of my resolution.
I’m going to embrace my mid-morning breaks, the opportunity of deciding my own working hours, the chance of having free time and being on my own and having time to write, blog, cook, photograph and whatever I want to do. I’m going to enjoy every bit of it, starting today.