Tired tonight after a long day

I left home this morning about 7:30 to make sure I was in the Keystone ferry line in plenty of time to catch the 8:45 ferry to Port Townsend. From there it would be an hour's drive to Seabeck, on Hood Canal, for the quarterly Seabeck Conference Center board meeting. My horoscope this morning said to avoid travel at all costs and I would have been grateful if fog had kept the ferry out of commission, but no such luck. Every day this week has been full and it would have been nice to have an excuse to stay close to home!

The board meeting itself was interesting and lunch was delicious, but I had to excuse myself a bit early, as the meeting was running overtime, so that I could get back to the ferry dock and catch the 3:45 boat home. I missed the boat by two cars and had to sit in the ferry line for almost two hours, so when I finally got on board at 5:15, I was pretty fried.

So I'm tired. Too tired to watch TV or a movie or read a book. Not too tired, apparently, to write a blog post, even if it's all about being tired.

Tomorrow will be the first day I've had in several days to catch up on household stuff. We're doing our Association Sunday this weekend and I'm pretty pleased with what the committee has come up with. All I have to do is the offering and the benediction. Others are doing the rest.

After church, I'll be heading out to the Ministers' Retreat in Federal Way, and I am looking forward to some rest. I counted up the hours I've spent this month working my 1/3 time job. I'm contracted for about 60 hours and so far I have put in 90! Yikes, gotta do something about that next month.

Others have written lately about the overload on ministers and the options available for help: mates, kids, friends. For a single minister, as a few have pointed out, there are not very many. If single Rev. Whosit doesn't do it, it won't get done. And that means everything: church work, laundry, meals, scheduling.

I'm lucky to be working parttime, I realize. I don't have all the professional demands on my time that a fulltime minister does. But I do have all the domestic demands and there's nobody but me to do them. Luckily, I've been operating singly for a long time and have a few systems in place that reduce the stress. But it's so easy to get overloaded in this work. Nobody but me can count the hours I spend and nobody but me can say no to the extra work. But it's hard to say no when someone needs to talk or needs a hospital or home visit.

We're all working way too hard and too long. That goes for PeaceBang, Jess and Obijuan, Chalice Chick, and all of us who want to do good work out there, no matter where we serve or who we serve. But I guess I'd rather work hard than be bored with too much time on my hands. Chances are we all would.

I'm babbling. Good night.

PS. Maxie has settled in enough that he is fearlessly harassing Lily and Loosy. They're still bugeyed, but no fur has flown---yet. I'm going to let some friends take care of him while I'm gone, rather than take a chance on leaving them all here in the house together for three days with only a neighbor kid coming by periodically.