just twenty-five
As of writing this, it's been almost three weeks since I finished up my contract at my corporate job. The truth is it's been officially four, but my manager and I had an unofficial agreement to offset three of my contract days so I could help conduct a workshop that my department was conducting with a different company. Why would I agree to this? Well, I thought it would be funny, seeing as the person that company was sending to conduct the workshop was my brother.
I've never worked with my brother in a professional capacity before, and it was fun (silly, almost) to interact with both him and my coworkers at once. As siblings, we are very close, but don't have much social overlap and never hung out with each other's friends growing up. It wasn't because we were embarrassed of our friends around each other, or vice versa, but all of us felt we were different around different circles, so we tried to avoid it.
But in recent years, those boundaries have been blurring more and more, and we're able to talk to each other's friends and work with each other's coworkers. It's refreshing to see how our dynamic has shifted over time – our capacity for being in each other's lives has expanded, and the warmth we feel for each other can extend to each other's loved ones without as much awkwardness as we feared.
Not to say that all my coworkers are my loved ones, but I've written before about how much I appreciate them, and I do consider a handful of them friends!
Despite how much I adored my work environment, I pretty much immediately readjusted to a homebody's lifestyle. I suppose the year I was at work was not enough for me to totally shift to being an Out and About™ girlie, and I'm just returning to my natural state. I don't know if I should be more worried about how little social interaction I'm getting now – everyone I talk to either lives with me or is in my phone. It's not bothered me much before, but I know this sort of thing can, without you knowing, cause you psychic damage.
I've started my teacher preparation program again, which is fully online and only meets once a week for an hour. The coursework is a lot, but not difficult, making it fairly easy for me to fuck around and do stuff I like most of the week. For that reason, I feel I should be doing more – earning on the side, exploring the city, or at least having a schedule so I don't go to bed with my only accomplishment being "I organized my playlists." I should at least find hobbies that involve leaving the house or getting up in the early morning.
But I wonder if I'm pressuring myself to do too much too quickly again. After all, the reason I hit pause on this program was because I thought it was such light work that I ended up adding three other things to my plate and burning out. I'd like to think my self-preservation instincts are better now, over a year later, but the guilt of not doing enough still nags at me. Maybe this is just what twenty-five looks like.