I can't stop dreaming about work. You know those busy 'process' dreams where there is a lot of pressure for something to happen, and it's not goddamn happening and, even if it's not your fault, it's your problem. And because this is all in dream logic, the cast list is an incongruous collection of colleagues or contacts from different jobs, times and places. (Shout out to Al in D.C., but please now get out of my dreams!)
And then I wake up and remember that I've stopped working and don't have to worry about whatever it was that was all-consuming five minutes ago but is already lost with the evaporating fog of the transition to being awake. Here comes the strange bit: it's not necessarily a relief. The experience of working in a busy environment and then just stopping left me feeling deflated.
I should say I'm fine (I mean, within the usual parameters) and I've been blessed with the mother of all first world problems: gardening leave. That means I will start going to work again in a new job (or opening a different corporate-issued laptop at home, depending on the pandemic's status) but right now I have some months in which I am meant to garden.
The expression gardening leave, meaning a period where you are paid but not working and thus putatively gardening, seems to have originated in the British civil service and, according to Wikipedia, entered wider usage after featuring in the sublime BBC sitcom Yes, Prime Minister in an episode called One of Us.
Sir Humphrey Appleby, an Oxford-educated senior civil servant whose policy advice frequently spills over into stewardship, is briefly threatened with a period of gardening leave so that an inquiry might be held into his collusion or incompetence in investigating the wrong kind of spying allegations in the intelligence services.
As someone on gardening leave but with limited horticultural talents or aspirations, I naturally took the time to watch the episode. I highly recommend it (but start with the prequel Yes Minister).
Sample dialogue:
"We don't want any more irresponsible and ill-informed press speculation."
"Even if it's accurate?"
"Oh especially if it's accurate, there's nothing worse than accurate irresponsible and ill-informed press speculation."
And 35 years after the programme was first broadcast it also manages to be topical this week, if you've been reading UK political news.
The situation in the sitcom of Yes, Prime Minister and Yes Minister is that the civil service always triumphs. So Sir Humphrey wins the day, and avoids his garden. He secures favourable media coverage for the prime minister by ordering the army to rescue a young girl's lost dog from a heavily mined artillery range – and simultaneously kills the prime minister's attempts to cut military spending due to the operation's huge cost.
Taking half an hour to watch 1980s sitcoms in broad daylight is exactly what, I tell myself, I should be doing right now. Surely it's also the sort of unstructured leisure you dream of when working? And yet. The sudden, grinding downward gear shift between being in a working environment, in meetings, taking phone calls, writing emails, ignoring emails, juggling deadlines and then an empty inbox and household chores is an experience that must come close to what you feel the day after you retire.
Intellectually you prepare yourself for that moment (from next week I won't be doing this) but emotionally I suspect you are unprepared. Jobs make us feel important and needed. There is plenty outside the world of work that does so too, but since those of us with jobs spend most of our time at work, it looms larger in our emotional landscape than we may wish to admit.
Many years and two employers ago I was sent on a hostile environments training course run by former SAS officers in the south of England as preparation for reporting from a war zone. They taught us battlefield first aid (brilliant) and why you can't really hide behind a car if someone is shooting high velocity bullets at it (they go through most parts of a car; your best bet is the engine block, if anything). One day while we were driving somewhere, they staged a roadblock and took us all hostage at gunpoint. We could see it was an exercise but I still shudder at the memory of having a gun, even without ammunition, held to my temple. The idea, they explained, was if we had gone through this shock and surprise once we would be better able to temper our emotional response if it ever happened in real life.
I also remember them asking us not to speak about that part of the training course, so do keep that just between us please as I'm still a bit scared of them. But I include it here because I think what I've learnt from my little practice retirement so far is to expect an emotional response many years from now when I hopefully embark on an actual retirement from work. Maybe I can skip the dreams next time.
And then I wake up and remember that I've stopped working and don't have to worry about whatever it was that was all-consuming five minutes ago but is already lost with the evaporating fog of the transition to being awake. Here comes the strange bit: it's not necessarily a relief. The experience of working in a busy environment and then just stopping left me feeling deflated.
I should say I'm fine (I mean, within the usual parameters) and I've been blessed with the mother of all first world problems: gardening leave. That means I will start going to work again in a new job (or opening a different corporate-issued laptop at home, depending on the pandemic's status) but right now I have some months in which I am meant to garden.
The expression gardening leave, meaning a period where you are paid but not working and thus putatively gardening, seems to have originated in the British civil service and, according to Wikipedia, entered wider usage after featuring in the sublime BBC sitcom Yes, Prime Minister in an episode called One of Us.
Sir Humphrey Appleby, an Oxford-educated senior civil servant whose policy advice frequently spills over into stewardship, is briefly threatened with a period of gardening leave so that an inquiry might be held into his collusion or incompetence in investigating the wrong kind of spying allegations in the intelligence services.
As someone on gardening leave but with limited horticultural talents or aspirations, I naturally took the time to watch the episode. I highly recommend it (but start with the prequel Yes Minister).
Sample dialogue:
"We don't want any more irresponsible and ill-informed press speculation."
"Even if it's accurate?"
"Oh especially if it's accurate, there's nothing worse than accurate irresponsible and ill-informed press speculation."
And 35 years after the programme was first broadcast it also manages to be topical this week, if you've been reading UK political news.
The situation in the sitcom of Yes, Prime Minister and Yes Minister is that the civil service always triumphs. So Sir Humphrey wins the day, and avoids his garden. He secures favourable media coverage for the prime minister by ordering the army to rescue a young girl's lost dog from a heavily mined artillery range – and simultaneously kills the prime minister's attempts to cut military spending due to the operation's huge cost.
Taking half an hour to watch 1980s sitcoms in broad daylight is exactly what, I tell myself, I should be doing right now. Surely it's also the sort of unstructured leisure you dream of when working? And yet. The sudden, grinding downward gear shift between being in a working environment, in meetings, taking phone calls, writing emails, ignoring emails, juggling deadlines and then an empty inbox and household chores is an experience that must come close to what you feel the day after you retire.
Intellectually you prepare yourself for that moment (from next week I won't be doing this) but emotionally I suspect you are unprepared. Jobs make us feel important and needed. There is plenty outside the world of work that does so too, but since those of us with jobs spend most of our time at work, it looms larger in our emotional landscape than we may wish to admit.
Many years and two employers ago I was sent on a hostile environments training course run by former SAS officers in the south of England as preparation for reporting from a war zone. They taught us battlefield first aid (brilliant) and why you can't really hide behind a car if someone is shooting high velocity bullets at it (they go through most parts of a car; your best bet is the engine block, if anything). One day while we were driving somewhere, they staged a roadblock and took us all hostage at gunpoint. We could see it was an exercise but I still shudder at the memory of having a gun, even without ammunition, held to my temple. The idea, they explained, was if we had gone through this shock and surprise once we would be better able to temper our emotional response if it ever happened in real life.
I also remember them asking us not to speak about that part of the training course, so do keep that just between us please as I'm still a bit scared of them. But I include it here because I think what I've learnt from my little practice retirement so far is to expect an emotional response many years from now when I hopefully embark on an actual retirement from work. Maybe I can skip the dreams next time.