Working 9-5

  What is it about work? And so the lack thereof?

  Is it the structure you don't have to create? The routine you don't have to plot out every morning when you wake up? The easy camraderie with people you don't have to arrange to see?

   A. All of the above.

   But then when you're working full-on, you think, if only I could be free for awhile, if only I had more time off to do the things that interest me. Ah, the stuff I would do, the places I would go. 

   Careful what you wish for.

   I knew I had a great job. I'm not that stupid. I loved being a reporter at a big newspaper. It doesn't get much better than that in terms of employment -- for me, anyway.  

   But as my husband always said, it's just a job after all. 

   Since he was right, it had its good days and bad, its bad years and good, its moments of triumph and disappointment, like every other job. 

   So I would fantasize about not doing it, about all the things I would do if I didn't have to do it.

   Now I don't have to do it. But I'd much rather still be doing it. Can I take all those fantasies back?

   It all came too quickly, prematurely. Boys still in college. My beloved newspaper business going down the toilet like a super-fast flush.  

   A friend of mine says that a wise old television reporter once told her that journalists hate working, but hate not working too.

   I'm pretty sure it's not just us.