Day 2

I'm having a kind of stressful evening at work (I'm a tutor at a boarding school).  One of my charges is driving me nuts with her lack of communication.  Just the thought of a nice Harpoon IPA makes me somewhat calmer, but there is no beer in my near future.  This is when I want to drink the most, as I mentioned yesterday: after work.  It not only helps me to "unwind" (what that means, exactly, I'm not sure), but it feels like a little gift after I have to put up with teenage BS all night.  I see this pattern not only in my little life, but in our culture overall:  work, work, work, reward, reward, reward (or zone out, zone out, zone out). Example (one I've voiced many times in the past): I worked 8 hours at a job I hate today, therefore I deserve this three-hour head-freeze in front of the TV with beer or other junk food.  I don't have a 9 to 5 anymore, but after working with kids for 5 or more hours, I don't really want to do any kind of intellectual gymnastics.  But I think my time would be better spent staring at a wall than watching sitcoms (which is why I can't have cable). Or what if work IS the reward?  There are always little gifts interspersed throughout my work sessions (like today one of my other kids and I had a nice conversation about propaganda during the Cold War, and another one made me laugh really hard with a wacky what-if scenario).  Maybe I will try to remember those too so I don't have to work so hard toward the beer at the end of the tunnel.  (That's the whole problem with everything: the straight ahead line of working toward an end, instead of work as just one aspect in the cycle of life.  It's the patriarchy, of course.) Or maybe I'll just have some ice cream when I get home instead.