Time off

I've just had a day off work. As I work part time, and it ran into a weekend, it actually ended up being more like the best part of a week off work all in all. It was nice. I tried to fill it with all the normal kind of fun things that I always would have done when I lived in London and had a day off - Xmas shopping, seeing friends, catching up on rubbish TV. Arlo and I spent a lot of time at home hunkering down because he had a cold and had teeth popping through and lost all sense of whether it was day or night and thought 2am was an acceptable time to get up and demand cartoons. So we spent some nights awake and some mornings snoozing on the sofa together and it all merged into one a bit.

So last night, the night before I went back to work after a bit of time off, I suppose usually I would've felt a bit glum, have a bit of the 'work blues' and wish for just one more day off to relax. And I suppose this morning as I settled in at my desk with a cuppa and the radio on, I would've felt refreshed after the break. I didn't feel either. I felt knackered. I felt happy to be back at my desk. I felt like today was my day off. 

I don't know if it's 'wrong' to admit this but I love being at work. It's what I've always done. It's for me. It's structured and it's a known entity that I have control over so I always know where I am with it. Being a parent is not really any of those things. I think I'm meant to want to devote every minute of every day and every ounce of my being to my child. But I don't really want to. I want to give my absolute everything to him when I'm with him, but I want sometimes not to be with him. I need the times without him to make the times I am as brilliant as they are. To appreciate every bit of them like I do. He's amazing and has changed me in many good ways and I miss him when he's not right next to me (that includes literally as soon as he falls asleep each night and I miss him so much I want to go into his room and wake him up just so we can play) but I really need the separate times too.  Is that Ok to say?