Alignment

When I was working at ABC, there never seemed to be a good time for a vacation. Either there were special shows to be done, or the loss of income was too much to consider. And when, as a cost-cutting measure, the shows began having dark weeks, those weeks didn't necessarily coincide with school breaks, so family vacations were hard to schedule.
 
When the shows ended, I suddenly had all the time in the world. Except that unemployment expected me to job search weekly, and the last thing our "nothing coming in" bank account could manage was the expense of a trip. Plus, what if we made plans to go away, and that turned out to be just the week that I was wanted for work?  (For the record, when you're freelancing, those "just the week" weeks always manage to come up at the trickiest times.)
 
In any case, it has been a long time since time and money and stars aligned to allow for vacation. Until this week. It's not fancy or extravagant. And perhaps it was not so much the alignment of things as the decision that you can't always wait for alignment, which is a lesson it has taken me years to learn. You see, one of the many things I have (perhaps) learned over these last few years is that you can't always know when something will end. You can't always predict which weeks will be "just the week," and which days will be the quietest, bleakest ones you think you've ever had. You can't know for sure which months you'll feel solvent and which you'll be blindsided by an unexpected household repair. What you can know is that, if you wait to know all of these things, you will be far too busy waiting ever to go on vacation.
 
So here I am, alignment having worked (or alignment be damned), on vacation. It will be over before I know it. But then, even that will be better than sitting around waiting for alignment.