A day in the life of...

This week has been hard... Hard, but good.

They seem mutually exclusive, but I think that the difficulty enhances the goodness. (When, of course, I can see it!)

I am so grateful for friends who lift me up when I cannot stand on my own any longer.

I almost went home... again. (This seems to be a pattern of mine... When things get difficult, I want to pack up and leave... and I come so close, but something inside me tells me, "This is not the way you want to leave. This is not how things should end. Try a little longer, and see what happens.")

Only eight more days until I'm done with this part of my job. I thought that keeping a running tally of days left would help encourage me to keep going, but I found that I only got overwhelmed by the thought of  eight more days of this... so I started telling myself, and God, "I can make it through this meal time. I can do that. That's all I can do right now, but I can do that much. I can last until this meal time is over." Eventually, enough meal times will pass, and I'll be done.

It's not so much the work that bothers me, it's the monotony. At first, it was apprehension because I didn't know what I was doing. That lasted about two days. The third day, I actually enjoyed myself. The fourth day, Friday, I was desperate to go home, desperate to escape the monotonous cycle that had become my life.

6 am- Wake, have Time with God

7:30- Report to kitchen

10- Cook my breakfast, eat, do something with remaining time (short nap?)

11:00/11:15- Report to kitchen

2- Cook lunch, eat, shower, read/nap/blog/play guitar

4:30- Report to kitchen

7- Cook supper, eat, phone calls/blog

9/9:30- Bed

I like routine, but not monotony. (My schedule in ID was good- a weekly routine, but each day was a different thing.) D phrased it interestingly- he said he likes the good kind of monotony, but not the bad kind. Good vs bad? I asked him to elaborate, and he said the good monotony is comfortable, whereas the bad monotony is, well, not. Like stability vs. mind-numbing boredom, I guess.

Today, however, is my day off, and I've enjoyed it. I'm coming down with a respiratory infection, so the rest has been good. I need to drink more water, and get ahold of some vitamin C powder somehow.

With a few minutes before suppertime, I think I'm going to call the family.