I Am Working & Smoking & I Feel FINE

So a funny thing happened.

I spend a lot of time at Tish's place these days...once she has her website up I will link her so all of you can see her fabulous wares and buy Venii (kidding)...mostly because I'm always happy when I'm here. I rarely want to leave unless I know I'm in the way, but the way the shop is set up, that's rarely the case. I can be hanging out in the sacred space/Reiki room, the reading room, the porch, the display room or the office with equal impunity (now, that's not true of everyone, but since I used to work for the Ineffable Patrick, I pretty much have the run of the place.) And I usually "work" when I'm here -- I fetch things and answer the phone, nothing that is paid, or needs to be.

Today I happened to show up at just the right time, as Tish and another associate were getting ready to close the shop early. ConservativeWiccan bowed out on watching the shop because he had dinner plans. I said, half-jokingly, "I'll watch the shop."

Now, I've watched the shop before, for about 15 minutes while Tish or Elf ran to the bank or to get lunch. But right now, I am Watching the Shop. I have keys, and authorization to use the credit card machine, and permission to give readings (I only) if customers want them since she's not here to read Tarot. I'm not really getting paid, although I could -- I just asked her to knock off the price on one of the items I've been coveting, and that sounded just dandy to her.

There are so many people I'd like to grow up to be, and Tish is one of them -- well, sort of a Tish/Patrick combo. I'd love to do what Patrick does...work for the state during the day helping people, then come to my own little shop at night and read and chat with folks until the early evening. And I just realized that the first step is almost mine, if I get the job with the courts that may or may not be mine in July.

I mean, I'd love to be a professor. And I may do that. And I'm definitely going back to college at some point, but at this point I seem to have so many areas I could be happy studying further, and they want me to pick one. You don't ask the girl with six books in six different genres literally in her bed at the moment to "pick one". So if I go back to school it's going to have to be some double major, triple minor, professional student venture. And in the meantime, I'd like to have something to do that doesn't often make me feel as if my soul and will to live have been sucked out my aural canal...not the work itself, but the hours required to make it pay.

But for right now I'm not stressing that. I'm listening to the fountain, and the bird imitating the ring of the phone, and watching the wind wave the grass outside the window (another thing I don't get to do enough, in the current work situation), and waiting. Waiting for someone to walk through the door and need me. Right now, though, no one owns my time but me. No one is watching me.

And that feels awesome. Not Bill & Ted awesome, but the real meaning that has been obscured by the popularity of the phrase. Filled with awe. I may be a wage slave, ladies and gentlemen, but I am free. Right now, I am free.

And CDHSarah is on her way, full of sickness as I expected, to bring me dinner.

However much I bitch, my life is awesome. And I am free.