Going Back

Work. That wonderful thing we love to bitch about over drinks.

“How was your day?” someone asks.

“It was a fucking bear,” you reply, already winding up to tell the story about an asshole who didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about. Maybe it’s a bad boss. Maybe it’s a pointless meeting. Maybe it’s the quiet, soul-sucking grind of realizing you spent eight hours just moving shit from one inbox to another.

Too often, work is framed as a necessary evil, the thing we tolerate to keep the lights on and inch our way toward retirement, paying off our lives in monthly installments. We enter high school full of wonder, learning about the world and imagining how we might change it, only to discover later that most of that was a lie. You start at the bottom. You wait your turn. You get passed over. Again. And again. And for many people, by the time retirement age finally rolls around, they can’t wait to sign the paperwork and start actually living.

I get that. I really do.

But I’m one of the lucky ones. I love what I do for a living. I love where I work. I love the people I work with.

And I haven’t been at work for almost three months.

Three months spent waiting for my body, mind, and spirit to stitch themselves back together after a violent, life-altering accident. Three months of clawing my way back one painful step at a time. And I am fucking ready.

The last few weeks, I’ve been going a little out of my goddamn mind, not from boredom, but from momentum with nowhere to go. I’ve been busy as hell: a dozen short stories, two books, a motorcycle safety initiative I plan to spend the next year pushing into the world. I haven’t been idle. Not even close.

But there’s something I started at work, something meaningful, that the accident interrupted. And I’ve been itching to get back to it. To add my voice again. To be part of the slow, imperfect winds of change that make institutions better by inches instead of miles.

That excites me. Truly.

Yesterday, I got a letter from a doctor saying I could return to work. Today, I got clearance from our own medical professionals. Next week, I fucking start.

And that, after everything, fucking excites me.