May is tired

It has been a busy week here in Florida. It's always a challenge for me to spend a lot of time with my mother. She's truly one of the most self-centered people I've ever met, yet she is completely oblivious to the fact that this is the way she is.

I spent the week helping her get around, cooking, monitoring medications and ice packs, and being subjected to more game shows than I thought anyone could watch in the course of a day. I also spent several hours each day cleaning up around her property. Plants sure do thrive here in Florida. Toads, lizards, and bugs that look suspiciously like roaches also seem to be here in abundance.

I went to the Home Depot at 22nd and 28th (more or less), and bought some yard tools and gardening supplies that led me to several observations:

• First, plants cost a fraction of what they do where I live.
• Plants that we grow as houseplants back home are sold as outdoor garden plants here.
• Whereas back home we have a choice of 20 kinds of compost, here that selection is limited, but bagged soil comes in at least a dozen varieties.
• You can buy different gardening tools here, including a razor-sharp machete-like sword thingy that seemed like a bad idea for me as I have a less than spectacular history with fire and sharp objects. I realized later that given how things grow here, a machete is absolutely appropriate.

I've had a lot of time to think about a lot of things while I've been here. And to not think about things. I realized that not only do I have no burning desire to get back to my own life, I've barely thought about work this week.

I don't want to go back to work. I don't like my job anymore. Any joy I derived from it has been sucked out by budget cuts, bad management, and a numbers-driven focus shift and mission drift that no longer put people first. Vulnerable people. I'm in this work for the people.

I'm tired. This isn't the kind of "Oh, you just need a break and to recharge your batteries" kind of tired. I'm tired of working for a living. This is something I do need to think about, because I think that at this point, I could easily self-isolate and become invisible to the world. If I could afford it.

I am not a lazy person, but I no longer have much desire to get up every day and stick to a routine. I want to write. I want to create. I want to ride my bike. I want to direct the course of my days.

When I did think about work this week, I experienced tremendous waves of anxiety. When you no longer enjoy what you do, you should change it, right? The next logical question is, What do you want to do, May?

I honestly have no idea--maybe because I really don't want to work at all.