Monday Missions: Inception
There’s a strange thing that happens to you if you work for the one place long enough. A strange, nice thing.
I’m not talking about the sense of comfort and acceptance one may achieve, or even the camaraderie and relationships that can be forged through regular, eight-hour long bouts of having to cohabit with others. Rather, it’s a reward, albeit an abstract one, provided to you. This reward is intangible – you cannot buy it, you do not receive it in a nice box, and you definitely cannot return it for goods equal to the same value. No, it is that most elusive element that we never seem to be in surplus of, and always that little bit more: Time.
“Until I am measured I am not known,
Yet how you miss me When I have flown.”
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You work for an operation log enough and you get long service leave (LSL), a special kind of time away from work that is not to be used in times of sickness, nor does it became a resource to be called upon when you need that week away, or you want to make the first weekend in November and even LONGER weekend (If you aren’t from Victoria, that’d mean little. If you are, you’re probably rushing to get that Monday off right now). I am using my LSL now, as I write this. Real-time.
For many people LSL represents a chance to do something they wanted to do, like travel a world, which may take longer than their annual leave may allow for (especially if that world is, say, Mars). For others, it’s like a short career break. It’s not a year of study, or not-working, but it can be the time to engage in something you’ve dearly wanted to, but cannot due to the requirements of you that business hours make. This is sort of what I am doing – I am taking the first working day of the week, and I am making it MY time. Time to create, time to write, time to ENGAGE WITH THE WORLD.
So every Monday I will be taking up residence at a desk that is not my work desk. Nor will it be my home desk. Both of these places offer too many distractions to me (one is where I really should be doing something completely different), and so I have researched and found new locations. Today I am in the State Library, a place where I am immediately feeling smarter, simply for being surrounded by so many books. Like osmosis-by-paper. My vocabulary has passively stretched, and now includes the word camaraderie, which I have also learned is not a cheese.
Today I’m writing a movie review, and a blog post, and remember that book I raved about in November? The one I was writing about a sober middle-aged man investigating a coastal town only a few hours from Melbourne? I’m back on that wagon as well. For two people out there, this will mean I have things to share with you soon. For everyone else, your likes and sharing of my words will be like spurs to a cowboy’s steed, and prompt my thoroughbred writing fingers to…gallop-type…that much….
I have to go now. And work on my metaphors.
Today’s Music: “A Writer’s Dream”, by Petri Alanko. (Alan Wake: Original Soundtrack)
Thoughts In The Key Of N 