A day in the life of... someone who never leaves
In previous years, my summer holidays would have been filled with exciting tales of visiting the USA or going to weddings or going on my honeymoon - but now, as a married man living outside the confines of ten-week terms, it isn't the summer holidays yet.
In fact, and this may scare you, I don't get to have a summer holiday.
There are two reasons for this - the first is that, as an MA student, I actually have degree work that goes over summer. This is true of most Masters students, but also true of many undergraduate students including nursing students. As some students enjoy their seventeen week break, some get one or two. Never forget.
The second is that I work full time near campus, and am therefore doing an additional forty or so hours. I have a couple of holidays to take off, but since I'm going to see Brazil play in the Olympics football (yay!) and am doing walking tours throughout the holidays, I have limited options for this. And besides, I have continuous meetings and tasks for the next couple of months, and have work to do for The Yorker.
But is that really a bad thing?
I, as I said previously, have a long history of exciting summers, from spending over a month living in Philadelphia to running communications at a festival to getting married. And yet, despite that excitement, I'm actually much more content with my life as it stands. I remember, even in the middle of exciting summers, that boredom would still creep up on me, or frustration at what I was doing or how my degree was going - but no more.
Perhaps part of that is my wife - though she's spending two weeks away from me over the next month - or a healthy relationship with God that helps to drive me every day. Perhaps another part of it is that I'm more settled, living in a house for the second year in a row - with everything set up as I would like it and nobody else getting in the way (aside from my wife, of course). I've been content to have a stable job for the last six months, and enjoyed it, but am content to try something new for the next month as I do regular daily walking tours. Either way, I'm working in a place that I enjoy working, which was less true when I worked in catering for five years.
Sure, I have work. I have a long essay to write in an area I'm not an expert in, I'm swamped with work in virtually everything I'm doing, I'm wary of the current state of planning in York and know that I'll be doing things linked to it in September and onwards, and I am completely unsure of what I'm doing next year. But that's not the point; I'm content.
So I guess here's my advice; it's easy to get bored or annoyed with what you're doing, it's easy to get frustrated with how life seems and it's easy to get worried about what's going to happen in a year's time. It's just as easy to get stressed with relationships, or get annoyed beyond belief at jobs or job situations or new housemates. But, ultimately, no matter the situation, it should also be easy to find contentment - to know that almost everyone else is in a similar situation, and that you're not out of the ordinary.
Enjoy what you do, and find contentment in it, and have a good summer!
