So today I hurried back to the grind of working a job after a couple weeks of holiday vacation.  It was, as they say in the taciturn parts of this state, not a bad thing to be off for so long.  While it wasn’t bad to get started again, I hopped into the saddle with some trepidation.

I don’t mean trepidation as in “It’s been so long I am a little scared I won’t know what to do or where to go.”  I mean it more in the “Dang it is awfully nice not to have to work for someone else or really to have to work at all and boy wouldn’t it be great if I could keep all this material greatness and quit the day job?” sense.  That is the kind of trepidation I mean.

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to fit one long, uncommonly uttered word into just a few sentences of something more than one person will read at least three times.  Check that off my list.  If we can jump to the meta-cognition level here, when except over the holidays, when I can sleep in until 7:30 (7:30!) for three days straight, would I ever have the idea encompassed in the previous sentence?  See what I mean?  Not working means thinking deep thoughts, thoughts that can only come when one truly relaxes.

Alas, I was back to the work thing today.  I did watch it snow from the warm side of the window.  That was, and I’m not afraid of being called effeminate or even (heavens!) a pansy if I use the word, lovely.  Then I drove home on the icy and slippery asphalt, hands clenched on the wheel, sweating in the down jacket I both didn’t need and forgot to take off in my haste to get to the post office, slowly.

The saddle in which I returned my physical self was metaphorical, of course.  I’m no wrangler.  I’m no jockey.  I can’t even really call myself a desk jockey anymore, although I did spend way too much time sitting today.  My saddle was a chair in this case.  At the end of the day I rode off into the screen saver sunset, bouncing along peacefully on the pneumatic riser of the padded office seat.  It was a lovely way to end the day.  And a lovely way to start the week.