Old Habits Dies Hard

Today, Sunday, started out as a perfectly blank day. A rendez-vous with with my husband was just about all I had on my mind. But then I opened an e-mail from work and realized that there were problems looming. I traded my forever cancelled Sunday massage for a drive into the office, thinking it would be just for a little while, in the hope that Monday I wouldn’t be starting out inundated by production nightmares.

Almost 7 hours later I came home. It was dark and it was dinner time. Where did my perfectly blank Sunday go? Can’t I please just have another crack at free time? I promise to relax.

I haven’t done this weekend work thing for a long time now, forsaking overtime for sanity. I hope this isn’t a harbinger of a return to those exaggerated workweeks – those weeks from hell where work dominated every day.

My job becomes a pressure cooker this time of the year when a summer publication deadline looms large. My staff are excellent, but they haven’t completely released me from being ultimately responsible. My goal over the next few years is to make them take the heat away from me, so that I can just slip away into retirement at some point and no one will even know that I am gone. I wonder how many more weekends I will sacrifice before that actually happens?