Pa' Que Trabajar

Just kidding. I do need to work. But I also need to put it in its place.

Nothing’s happening lately. No exciting email, text, DM. No special invitation to do something cool. All there is is wake up, commute, work, commute again. I’m so bored.

However, if I’m being honest, I’m realizing that I’m using work as the barometer for the quality of my actual life. I’ve let it set the tone for everything. But then I think about this:

Last month, my 79-year-old mother got spinal surgery. Not only is she recovering at a pace that’s baffled the rehab facility, but she hasn’t said a peep about her pain. A pain that has terrorized her for a year. Today, she feels only the promise of a good merengue in her near future.

We “babysat” our five-year-old niece last weekend. Just my husband and me, taking this precocious, hilarious kid to the park, the pizza shop and Ben & Jerry’s, where she played chalk-drawn hopscotch in the shop’s backyard while holding on tight to her mango ice cream cone. She declared we were “more funner than ever” and promised she’d always want to visit our fun house.

Earlier this week, on a Monday no less, my husband and I went to an “arts stroll” at The Hispanic Museum & Library in Washington Heights. We even stopped by the after-party. Look at us, I thought, fully in our empty-nester, let’s-be-artsy-and-meet-new-people era. It was inspiring.

Tomorrow we celebrate our niece’s college graduation at a fancy banquet hall. There will be dancing, speeches, photos, family. I cannot wait.

A few Saturdays from now, we’re having dinner with friends we’d lost touch with. The wife and I were editors together during the heydays of publishing. Some of our favorite memories include her and her husband. I anticipate that we’ll pick up right where we left off.

And somewhere in between, my sister and I are having a Golden Girls Day with our old childhood besties. This was planned over dinner a few weeks ago. Let’s stop letting so much time go by, we said, and coordinated calendars right on the spot. Sure, we had to cycle through a few dates before landing the perfect one, but we did it.

I took myself shopping, for coffee, and for tacos today. I even drove myself! If you know how uncomfortable I am behind the wheel, then you know the enormity of this. This was a delicious flat white. I took a photo because A) I can be basic sometimes and B) I needed art for this post.

So where was I?

I’m bored? Nothing’s happening? Work is not life. It’s necessary and often, fulfilling and fun, but it is not life.

I’m glad I’m catching on.