NEWSLETTER - vol. 8
The writing has slowed down a little. It's made room for something more tangible, hands writing temp and pressure readings into a log instead of building sentences, thoughts divided into split seconds to satisfy an upset spectator instead of being slowly poured out across a paragraph. I've been noticing the trade without minding it.
Most days now come down to carrying something heavy from one place to another. Filled trash bags farmer-carried across multiple rinks. Hockey nets pulled off the ice, dragged and pushed over bare concrete. Up the stairs to get the mess cleaned up, down the stairs, up again. Repeat. The work doesn't ask for interpretation. It asks for a body that shows up.
The brain works just as hard as the body, only on a different set of problems. Does the timing work between these two rinks? Is the customer happy? Is the employee happy? Does the coworker have what they need? Are the compressors running the way they should? More water or less? Can this thing get repaired before it has to run again? None of it stops, and somehow all of it is compelling in a way that makes me want more of it instead of less.
My pay dropped seventy percent when I left Trek. That should scare most people, and I won't pretend it doesn't scare me some. It's also exhilarating. I'm almost fifty and I've lived paycheck to paycheck for most of my adult life. I know how to do that. At Trek there was extra money and I spent it because it was there. This job put me back in the space I actually know, one paycheck at a time, and there's something freeing in that, not despite the narrowing, because of it.
A limited income limits your options. That sounds like a loss until you need the reduction. Going into spring my brain was worn down from a winter of work and the leadership that hovered above it. My body was worn down from years of driving and not moving consistently in any way that meant something. My weeks were full of deadlines and my weekends went to a chair and a television. None of that was the life I wanted, and all of it had extra money attached to it.
This morning I'm having coffee on what's become my Saturday. Yesterday closed out a banger of a week at the rink, two tournaments, a small crew that handled it, a night shift that set us up so well that even the near-fights and the trash cans full of bloody towels couldn't knock us off pace. I'm tired today, and I know exactly why. That's the difference between now and before. I used to be exhausted all the time with every resource available to me and never once could I point to the cause. Now my body's fatigue has an address and my brain rests because it already knows where tomorrow starts.
Thanks for reading along, I promise this won’t always be about me leaving one job to go find peace and rest at another.
Music this week: Mop Mop, Lunar Love - deep and sometimes dark, Gnawa rhythm under dub and jazz and funk, a groove that earns its lift instead of performing it.
Thanks again for reading. See you next Monday.