so this happened

 Yesterday afternoon, after doing a bunch of grading and fixing up the final exams for this spring, I decided to try to walk outside a little, so I could get some steps in. (I do think I need to keep moving for the muscles; I think a lot of the issues I still have is the muscles are weak and I've been misusing them while favoring that leg). I admit I was sore and had to use the cane (I mostly did not, today). I was about 1/4 mile into the walk when I met my department chair coming back from the "faculty appreciation hour" (I didn't go; I had to be available to collect lab books being turned in, and no one in our department was up for an award this year.

She stopped me. "I have things for you" and I realized I forgot that this was my 25th year here.

She gave me a folder with a certificate in it (Which I might frame, I don't know. The research award I won some years back is hanging up in my office over at school).

And a brick.

Yes, you heard me: a brick.

(Photo, with my name and school name covered up. Most of you regulars know who I am but if someone randomly comes across this I don't want to just have it all out there

I admit, I complained a bit: "Now I have to carry a BRICK back with me?" (I was, as I noted, using the cane, and carrying stuff while using the cane is unpleasant). "I've had to carry THREE" responded my chair." And yes, fair. 

But a brick is sort of an odd thing to commemorate years of service. 

Like, okay, I guess I could use it as a paperweight on my desk. 

But - and I made this joke to a colleague, but maybe he was too young (or even more square than I am?) to get it - about Pink Floyd and "Another Brick in the Wall" and so it IS kind of a weird flex to me. 

But I don't know, maybe they thought coffee mugs were too pedestrian.

It's still in my car. I didn't quite feel like carrying it up the stairs with me this morning to my office. 

I also don't know how I feel about the 25 years. Some time back, I would have felt proud about it: I've kept this up for a really long time! When my colleague T. retires this spring, only my department chair will have been here longer than I am. 

But also....25 years IS a long time to be stuck in the same place doing largely the same thing, and I admit some days I wonder if I wasted my life, or if my idea of a comfortable and "safe" career was TOO safe, and I haven't really done much of anything to make a mark on the world. And what do I do once I retire?

I know part of this is the knee talking - until the injury I had back-of-my-mind plans to do parks volunteer work, lead hikes, that kind of thing. But if I can't walk comfortably for more than half a mile, what do I do? And I admit there's some echo of what happened with my dad - by the time he retired, his arthritis (Mostly in his knees, but some in his back) was so bad he couldn't do very much. And I think of that and kind of despair - one of the things about getting older for me has been it seems that possibilities close down or go away, and I don't really see new ones cropping up. And that scares me. (It's not unrelated to my feeling of "I keep losing people, but it seems I don't have a chance to "replace" them in my life with things like new friends). 

And lord knows I haven't taught as well this past year, and I haven't done much research at all since the pandemic - it's like that whole thing drained all the fire out of me and made me feel less like anything has a lot of a point to it. 

But hey, now I have a brick that shows me where my life went, I guess?

Oh, I'll probably feel better about it eventually, especially if my knee ever gets better, but right now....well, yeah, this is just another thing that whoever winds up as my heir or my executor will have to throw away after I'm gone.