It’s Good Friday in the United States which means that the Indiana State Library is closed.  That means that ostensibly I’m off work.  In reality, I’ve been up since 5 a.m. working on projects that I don’t get to work on during my daily work because of distractions and the many aspects of the job.  Please.  I know.  This is a bleeding red flag for several things including burn out.  

I am flirting aggressively with burn out.  Thankfully, I know that I will be leaving my position at the end of May to move to Virginia.  I mean, that’s something.  Right?  It means a lot of really good things.  It means that I get to live with the love of my life in a place that I love.  It also means that I will be moving away from my home state of nearly thirty years and away from easy contact with my children.  And it means that I am leaving the security of my job without the assurance of permanent employment.

It’s been stressing me out.  I’m already stressed out. And I’m tired of it.

And so now it’s time to turn the page on that and talk about another aspect of this next chapter.

It is about taking real risks.  It was a real risk to get married.  It was a bigger risk to get married while in recovery to a partner in recovery.  For me, those were risks worth taking.  It was also a huge risk to put my new “boundary making” skills to use and set deadlines for leaving my job and moving.  Again worth it.  And, it was a risk to both put myself forward as a possible contractor and then agree to that proposition.

But that’s what I’m going to do.  Take all of those risks.  I’m going to work as a contracted transitional ECDI coordinator for a year.  And during that time, I’m going to build some of my other skills and use my “time and place” to create a new structure of work for myself.  Something that isn’t about the meat grinder leading to burnout.  Something that aligns with those things I WANT to be passionate about.  Something that lets me get old but not obsolete. 

So, let’s see.