And I wouldn’t mind your tips, dear readers.

If you had a few extra hours in your day, and needed to get off your duff, away from monitors and aren’t particularly talented in art, cooking or any endeavors requiring coordination, what would you do?

Topic jump.

I made two extremely traumatizing decisions (for me) this week. Yeah. A momentous week, this was.

One was social. Months ago I rearranged my work schedule to get last Friday and this upcoming Saturday cleared so I could attend the retirement party of a close friend and the wedding of my best friend’s daughter.

Call me whatever you will, but I couldn’t do it. The retirement party was a congregation of about 100 people. Some gathered from other states. The wedding is set in a county where people aren’t believers in vaccinations.

While I am vaccinated and am personally willing to risk Covid (knowing it won’t be as problematic due to vaccination), I am NOT willing to be a carrier and potentially put myself in a situation where I was either incapable of helping my family if they need it or even worse, infecting them. And I know I might be needed to help in a high risk situation shortly.

Chris and I cancelled attendance on both events.

My friends are amazing. This is how blessed I am. When I called off, all parties involved expressed a complete understanding and respect for my beliefs and decisions. Amazing friends.

So that was the social.

The other was in work. You know I love my job if you follow my blog. But I’m also wearing thin. I don’t know if it’s my personal life (the baby tumor situation is 1/3 of my biggest stressors at the moment), but it’s something. To be humanly honest, I am catching myself making mistakes. Not giving the customer care I should.

So I cut back work hours. Starting Sept. 1. I’m going to only work 32 hrs a week. I’ll still stick to the four-day work week. I love it. But it will be eight hour days instead of ten.

Can I tell you again how amazing my job is? I know, eye-roll, here we go again. But can you tout amazing-ness enough?

Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com is letting us choose to work at 80% or 60% time….and still keep our benefits.

Now if you all want to bow in respect a bit, I understand. This is unheard of in our cutthroat world. I get that. And yet here it is. The crazy part is that this job is so stinkin’ amazing that I don’t want to stop. But clearly, to help others best, I need to be in a more focused brain-frame. For now. I might change back to full-time in the future. That is still an option.

For now, I will re-group. And these are my hard decisions.

Off-hand, two hrs a day extra doesn’t seem like much. But it’s kinda huge. It means I can catch first tracks daily on the slopes and start work at noon and only end an hour after I do now. Or I can start writing again (I was a professional writer before this job — specializing in media literacy). Or I can make something and create a store. Or exercise more and try to get tired enough to really sleep at night. So many dreams and options.

Any tips? Who’s been here before, and what can you suggest?

I look forward to the next step in life’s game…