Progressions.

Today is a long weekend for me.  It must have started many months ago but  I have been so busy trying to doing things I want to do before I die that I needed to take a break.  So I am taking a long weekend.

Working at a paid job gave me a foundation on which to predict life's progression.  I was able to punctuate my structured "on the job" time with unstructured time like long weekends.  Pay gave me a way to measure advancement as I counted credits.  My paid work time was organized, in the service of someone else, either a client  or the employer who paid the wage.  Living inside my paid work world meant that I didn't have sole  responsibility for how I would plan to expend time.  On rare weekends I longed for work to start again on Monday because I felt lost without the even flow of time and accumulation. 

 When I've been unemployed I grieved my lost spaces and my markers in the world.   I remember these times as exhausting efforts to get back onto the jerky platform of a job so  I could re-start my accumulation of  credits, so I could eventually do stuff I really wanted to do at a future point in my life.  Through this nest of beliefs my life's progress was deferred. 

Now I am relatively well off  for latitude as to how I watch the progression of time.  I have arrived at that future point, sort of.  I am insecure about our future but I'm not racing to get back onto the old cart.   I am spending my time in a more wholesome way than I did in those dark days on pogey.   I am divesting my economic value.  I don't have a job description nor a crescendo of ecstasy.  Meanwhile, time is twisting and warping like a column of smoke on a cool damp evening.   More and more I whisper to myself and listen to the sounds the whispers make.