Days Off

The first workday after a long weekend is mostly an exercise in remembering which day everybody has agreed it is. #

Tuesday behaved like Monday all day and my brain refused to accept the correction. I woke with that particular confusion produced by an extra day off, looked at the clock and knew I had work, but some internal calendar kept insisting the week had only just begun. Coffee helped. Coffee always negotiates with reality better than I do before eight. I got ready in the familiar sequence, chose clothes, changed one thing, changed it back, perfume, coat, bag, bicycle. The ride felt good. After several days of wandering without purpose, moving through the city toward work gave the morning a clean line. I like that about routines. They are not prisons when the life around them belongs to you. They are rails. Work was busy enough to make the morning disappear. Everybody had that post-holiday energy where there are simultaneously too many emails and too many conversations about the holiday. English everywhere, Dutch around the edges, coffee cups multiplying. I fixed something quickly that would have taken me longer a few years ago and felt that small private satisfaction of competence. I rarely write about competence because it sounds dull, but I like being good at my job. Not perfect. Not brilliant every second. Just capable. I like looking at a problem and recognising its shape. I like knowing when to try something and when to ask somebody else. I like that I am no longer the woman who arrived in Amsterdam wondering whether she could build a professional life here. I did. Then I stopped narrating it to myself because work became work. That may be the real achievement. On the way home I bought groceries and realised I was humming country music under my breath. I stopped when I noticed somebody nearby because there are limits to public authenticity. At home, Yuri was later than me. I enjoyed the quiet for a while, changed clothes, opened the window, put music on. When he arrived we talked about our days while making dinner. He works at the hotel, I work with the web, and our professional worlds overlap almost nowhere, which I think is healthy. Neither of us can take over the other’s story. We listen. Sometimes we understand. Sometimes we nod convincingly. Tonight I told him about something technical and watched his eyes become polite. «You have no idea what I’m saying.» «Not a word.» I laughed so hard I had to stop. That honesty is also thirteen years. No need to perform fascination with CSS. After dinner I called Mom. She asked whether going back to work had been difficult. «No.» And it hadn’t. The long weekend was lovely. Today was lovely in a different, quieter way. I am in bed soon. Tomorrow is Wednesday. I checked.

Remember me, Eclipse.