I had been on vacation just about a week and a half and went back to work mid-week. It had been an even longer break in some sense because some of the more challenging people I have to deal with were on vacation before me, so it had been over 3 weeks of respite from those issues.

My eldest came back from NYC having finished the first week of an internship, we have move him back to Boston for classes and will drop him off at the train tomorrow to resume a part-week  internship in NYC next week.

Lots of emotions have been going through me this past couple of weeks. With the kids gone it is so different, so quiet. It is like the rudder is broken and we are drifting until adjust. Last week when I was out for a long run I latched on the feeling as being so much like I felt many years ago when I went into work at a job I'd held for 10 years and was very unceremoniously and rather brutally told that it no longer existed and was handed a box. You attach yourself to something that in some sense becomes part of your identity and when it disappears it is like a part of you has died.  Intellectually I know that have kids go off is not the same as loosing a job but the immediate feelings are the same. What is my role now? 

Many people I know dive back into work when kids go off to college and let that consume their energy and time.  I am determined not to do this and to seek out what will renew and enhance rather than drain and deplete.When I returned to work the peace of the week was broken and almost immediately the bombardment of issues that build up because a lack of direction that I have little influence in. But, with a short week I am back into the weekend focusing in on what needs to be done and still on the rudderless side. I expect that when we get everyone else back on their routine, it will hit with more impact- but then it will be fall and the things that come up with that.