Maybe a Disappointment (but Probably Not)

Photo by Redd F on Unsplash

I had a substitute teaching day on Friday. It rained just as I was about to bring 13-first and second graders in from their extra afternoon recess time. Extra recess time is a wonderful thing when you are a substitute teacher. Sometimes, extra recess even happens when it is not on the regular teacher’s official plan for the day.

My little town hosted our monthly Open Mic night this week. Normally, I would want to go. Normally, I would go! But at the end of my substitute teaching day and my long work week of doing massages, I was spent. I was tired. Other words for this? Fried. Burnt. Exhausted. Done. Cooked.

I had more massage work than usual this week. It was the kind of week where I packed my lunch in the morning, ate breakfast in the car on my way down the hill to work, and staggered back home after dinner time. Sometimes a day like that looks like a 9:45 am massage, an 11:00 am massage, a 1:00 pm massage, a 2:15 pm massage, and a 3:30 pm massage. Maybe a half hour table or chair massage from 4:45-5:15. Five hours of massage plus a little extra used to be tiring, but doable. This week? It was a little much.

It could be the fact that I am older than last year, and twelve years older than when I started working at the retreat center, and 24 years older than when I graduated from massage school. Could all that have something to do with it?

Anyway. A good friend of mine, one of my heart friends, politely excused herself from attending an event this week. She needed to go home after a long day of work, because she was prioritizing self-care and was simply exhausted. And it wasn’t like she was abandoning a responsibility, something that only she could do. Everything would go along just fine without her (although of course we missed her. She should  know that for sure!)

But it made me think this week.

You can do that?

You can set boundaries and say no to good things, to good friends, to good people if you are very tired or for any other equally valid reason?

Why yes. Yes you can.

This is something that I am apparently still learning.

I was so proud of her.

So that is why I did not go to Open Mic night the other night. My good neighbors probably didn’t think too much about me not being there, but I struggled with that decision a little.  It’s an event that we have enjoyed together in the past, and it’s a wonderful community building activity organized by hard working volunteers who I love and want to support.

I just didn’t have it in me.

I am hopeful that next month, the lead up to Friday night Open Mic night will be less tiring. I’m going to plan on it.

And if by some strange set of work circumstances it’s not? I’ll stay home again, and trust that somehow, some way, all will still be right in the world.