The Second Job Died

How do you make time for self-care?

There was a time when “self-care” wasn’t even in the vocabulary. For over 50 years, I pretty much did what I was supposed to do: work. Work more. Make money. Pay bills. Repeat until you forget what the hell you were doing it all for. Free time was something other people had. I had jobs, responsibilities, and apparently a deep personal commitment to never sitting down.

Then I hit 52 and finally quit my second job. Suddenly, I had something I hadn’t had in decades: time. Actual time. Time to travel, screw around, take pictures, ride around, hang out with my wife and dogs, and just exist without constantly thinking about the next shift. Turns out you don’t have to spend every waking hour working just because society decided being exhausted is a personality trait.

Now I’m learning that self-care isn’t necessarily bubble baths and inspirational bullshit. Sometimes it’s simply having nowhere to be. Taking a trip. Going somewhere for no reason. Sitting around doing absolutely nothing and not feeling guilty about it. After spending more than half a century working, I’m finally figuring out that life was supposed to be lived somewhere between the hours of clocking in and clocking out.