Sheer Bliss!
I woke at 5:30 a.m. and smiled because I was in bed, not sitting in a building all alone, behind a microphone struggling through another forty-five minutes until sunrise set me free.I woke again at six and smiled because I was not cleaning up the debris of my coffee cups and fuel from the night then splashing water on face and wrists, rimming each nostril with essential oil of peppermint to kick the brain into a state to make the morning after drive home safe for me and others.
I woke at last at eight and smiled and stretched because for the first time in six months a Saturday is mine to live through rather than to sleep through and there are places I can go today that will not be available tomorrow or next week, only today. And I can be there if I choose, without a struggle to collect my weary senses into a cohesive unit of a human being.
I love doing my show but it has stretched from five hours to six as sunrise moves further away with the shrinking of the year and the other six days of the week are filled with things that must be done as commerce kicks in to Christmas gear. Work loads treble on the two of us who are there to do it.
Burnout tastes like bleeding gums, feels like the scrape of chalk on blackboard and I made a choice to put myself first this weekend, to take the days to rebuild the energies I spend so freely, especially as I will do two overnights this week, our Independence day and first day of Christmas month back to back midnight till morning and then I will take hiatus till the New Year. Because I need to.
Man, I must be growing up!