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I left for a while

It has been quite a few months. I found it hard to come in here without feeling sad. I busied myself with practical things- teaching, housework, spending time with Mom and the boy... and it actually helped.

After twenty two years of working ten-hour days and weekends filled with marking, I am so so so relieved and glad to be rid of that kind of life. It was not really a life. It was a miserable fraction of a life that I lived with work dictating everything.

Finally when I quit my job in 2019 and when I thought I could have more time to spend with family and friends, it had to happen that an online friend would take his own life.

Just as I thought I could leave to start a new life in Spain, the pandemic would wreak havoc and international borders would close.

But I will still give thanks today. The best is yet to be.

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Mugin16 · 46-50, M

After twenty two years of working ten-hour days and weekends filled with marking

That reminds me of a quote by the economic historian David Landes who wrote that Americans and Chinese are the only people who live to work while everybody else works to live. I am not sure if he meant this as a compliment for the American and Chinese work ethic or not.

novembermoon · 51-55

You are so right. I used to feel secretly pleased that we’re seen as diligent people, not given to indulging in too much leisure and pleasure. However, now that I’m older, I see it as a work ethic that is quite killing and inhumane.And it is true that people here are so absorbed by work that there is nothing else in their lives. It is a common joke here to point at someone and say > this guy has nothing in his life but $. This pragmatism is also a kind of idolatry, I feel. @Mugin16

Sssslm · F

@novembermoon there is a similar joke in my city, "so poor that only $ left".