The old soul wearing a middle ground body sat in preternatural calm, on warm rocks with the cold sea lapping at his feet. He thought of currents, the Gulf Stream and Humboldts of the world caressing his legs with soft whispers of presences in the deep. His jeans were three shade of indigo dissolving into the restless water. There were barnacles, scratchy.
For the first time in his life the gelatinous fingers of seaweed entwined about his toes failed to make him shudder. This was new. Perhaps a sign of new things to come. A sea change, he thought. The idea brought a smile to his sunburned cheeks.
Sea change. Yes. The old soul reached up to adjust the salt-rimed hat that crowned his head. The hat was old, its fabric soaked with memory, and with pretensions to being green. He snugged it down, and pulled his windbreaker a little closer in. The argentine sun was high up in a sky that defined cerulean yet it offered little real warmth. Wind and water saw to that.
Still, he kept his feet where the breakers could touch them. The water was cold, but felt good. In its own aqueous way it felt like a blanket the old soul used to have, back when he was a boy and the world was new. The water rose and fell, inducing the tide in his veins that swelled to spring tide in his heart.
He sighed. waves gurgled and hissed among the rocks. The leading edge of the water slowly edged backwards away from him, and quiet fell along the shore. The old soul looked up. He expected that seventh wave to come roaring out of the sea, and if his eyes didn't deceive him, there was a big swell eating the horizon. His teeth flashed in the sun. Salt air filled his lungs, and he knew.
Sea change, yes. It was there. It was coming. As a younger man, the sight of such a swell would have sent him running up the beach. But not now. He laid his hands in his lap, mind filling with nothing, waiting to embrace the wave that would surely sweep him off the rocks.
Showing posts with label reinvention. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reinvention. Show all posts
19 December 2012
03 July 2012
Salarymen in the Mist
On Friday, June 29th at approximately 7:30 in the morning I swung my feet from bed to floor only to find that it was quite possible I no longer exist. A disconcerting sensation no matter which day of the week on which it might occur, but all the stronger for it being close to the weekend. I was not pleased with this turn of events. I like to exist.
Vertigo laced with anxiety made my belly flip a little. I patted the carpet, a high shag affair, with my feet to assure myself that I could indeed stand up. The softly scratchy strands felt good, felt so mundane that I made myself get to my feet. Surely the floor would support me. No embarrassing sinking through the floor to fall to the living room below and then on to the the basement. Why I thought a concrete slab would hold me if carpet and a wood floor would not, I do not know. I stood up. I did not sink into or through the floor, except to the extent my weight caused compression of the carpet. Very reassuring, that.
Sunlight leaking in between the small slats of the blinds caused me to blink. A good sign as well, I told myself. The knot in my belly loosened almost imperceptibly. Air flowed into my lungs with a muffled rasp. The sound inside my head gave me some comfort. It seemed so normal. I think I was just happy to breathe and feel the coursing of air in my chest.
So far, so good. Feet on the floor, air in the lungs, no fainting or disappearing into the woodwork. I felt less dizzy as I quickly scanned my surroundings.
Rumpled sheets.
Bedside table with books.
Low hum of fan.
Phone on nightstand.
Heart beating, limbs moving, earth turning. I must be here, I exist...right?
Then why did I feel as if there were no gravity and that my flesh was becoming transparent before my groggy eyes?
I shook it off and made my way to the bathroom for some brief ablutions. Then it was downstairs for tea and breakfast. I don't recall what I made then, it must have been something simple. There were things to do and places to go, and none of them would wait for angst to make itself scarce. I showered and made ready for a road trip, all the while puzzling over my very own 'unbearable lightness of being'. It kept me occupied for quite some time.
Somewhere between lunch and departure it hit me square in the cerebral cortex: I am a salaryman without a salary, and thus a certain way, I do not exist. I don't earn, therefore, I am not. Years of societal and professional conditioning had led me to this identification of self with salary, and that is a dangerous place to hang the hat of one's identity.
The pieces came together. I am approaching nine months without employment, and in this culture of job = money = worth, that nine months is akin to a lifetime. This feeling gripped me hard, this uneasy knowledge that to many employers perhaps I have become invisible. Nothing breeds success like success, and ladies and gentlemen, I have had no success in the time I have been looking. There is some truth to the notion that it is much easier to get a job when you already have a job, and I am without.
Not exactly front page news in architecture, a profession that unfortunately seems to demand experience without necessarily wanting to pay for it. You can imagine how discouraging that feels, having put in a lot of time with no results to show.
I took some cold comfort from having identified the root cause of my anxiety. It is always easier to deal with a known enemy rather than a mystery. I talked it out some with my companion, and was reassured that I do exist, that I live and breathe, and that I am real.
I know I am. I feel the blood in my veins, the air in my lungs, the food in my belly. These are all good. What troubles me is that for a bad moment on an ordinary morning, external ideas of self-worth overrode internal ideas of my identity. Nine months of looking for myself in the wrong mirror came to roost, and it took some heavy mental lifting and a strong dose of love to return the ground to beneath my feet.
Solid ground. I have it. I gained some breathing room for my mind. There will be something out there for me, I have to believe that. It will be something I can do, even if I myself do not know yet what that something is. What I will not do is make the mistake of confusing what I can do for money with what I truly am worth.
Vertigo laced with anxiety made my belly flip a little. I patted the carpet, a high shag affair, with my feet to assure myself that I could indeed stand up. The softly scratchy strands felt good, felt so mundane that I made myself get to my feet. Surely the floor would support me. No embarrassing sinking through the floor to fall to the living room below and then on to the the basement. Why I thought a concrete slab would hold me if carpet and a wood floor would not, I do not know. I stood up. I did not sink into or through the floor, except to the extent my weight caused compression of the carpet. Very reassuring, that.
Sunlight leaking in between the small slats of the blinds caused me to blink. A good sign as well, I told myself. The knot in my belly loosened almost imperceptibly. Air flowed into my lungs with a muffled rasp. The sound inside my head gave me some comfort. It seemed so normal. I think I was just happy to breathe and feel the coursing of air in my chest.
So far, so good. Feet on the floor, air in the lungs, no fainting or disappearing into the woodwork. I felt less dizzy as I quickly scanned my surroundings.
Rumpled sheets.
Bedside table with books.
Low hum of fan.
Phone on nightstand.
Heart beating, limbs moving, earth turning. I must be here, I exist...right?
Then why did I feel as if there were no gravity and that my flesh was becoming transparent before my groggy eyes?
I shook it off and made my way to the bathroom for some brief ablutions. Then it was downstairs for tea and breakfast. I don't recall what I made then, it must have been something simple. There were things to do and places to go, and none of them would wait for angst to make itself scarce. I showered and made ready for a road trip, all the while puzzling over my very own 'unbearable lightness of being'. It kept me occupied for quite some time.
Somewhere between lunch and departure it hit me square in the cerebral cortex: I am a salaryman without a salary, and thus a certain way, I do not exist. I don't earn, therefore, I am not. Years of societal and professional conditioning had led me to this identification of self with salary, and that is a dangerous place to hang the hat of one's identity.
The pieces came together. I am approaching nine months without employment, and in this culture of job = money = worth, that nine months is akin to a lifetime. This feeling gripped me hard, this uneasy knowledge that to many employers perhaps I have become invisible. Nothing breeds success like success, and ladies and gentlemen, I have had no success in the time I have been looking. There is some truth to the notion that it is much easier to get a job when you already have a job, and I am without.
Not exactly front page news in architecture, a profession that unfortunately seems to demand experience without necessarily wanting to pay for it. You can imagine how discouraging that feels, having put in a lot of time with no results to show.
I took some cold comfort from having identified the root cause of my anxiety. It is always easier to deal with a known enemy rather than a mystery. I talked it out some with my companion, and was reassured that I do exist, that I live and breathe, and that I am real.
I know I am. I feel the blood in my veins, the air in my lungs, the food in my belly. These are all good. What troubles me is that for a bad moment on an ordinary morning, external ideas of self-worth overrode internal ideas of my identity. Nine months of looking for myself in the wrong mirror came to roost, and it took some heavy mental lifting and a strong dose of love to return the ground to beneath my feet.
Solid ground. I have it. I gained some breathing room for my mind. There will be something out there for me, I have to believe that. It will be something I can do, even if I myself do not know yet what that something is. What I will not do is make the mistake of confusing what I can do for money with what I truly am worth.
05 November 2011
Contender Blues
The bubble popped and I snapped awake. Years, gone, and where did I wake up?
I had one of those moments today, of ennui spiced with dislocation, and a dash of mild anxiety. It was induced by a chance encounter via email. The email came from a professional networking website and it was chock full of catalysts and memory triggers in the form of "what-have-you-done-since..." blurbs. The past come back to nag me.
The feeling of being underwater has been intense in the nearly four weeks since I was let go from the job. Some days I wander around immersed in the sensation. I put it aside most of the day, as I had my darling daughter with me, and it was good.
But that email brought it all back. I scrolled through the page, looking at all the people who had been somewhere and done something and it was at the end of it that the bubble popped. I started as if awoken while sleepwalking. It took me a brief pause to collect myself to remind me that I was on the couch staring at the laptop screen. I was home.
Home, and wondering just what it is that I had been doing all these years. Picking through the battered scrap heap of my career life to try and piece together that which I could point to and say: I Did This, And I Am Wonderful. The pickings, it seemed to me, were too thin.
Leaning back into the sofa cushions all I could think was that I need to get my stuff together. I need to do something worthwhile and soon, as I have metaphorically been sawing off the limb behind myself. Its only a matter of time before that limb cracks. I need to hurry.
I need to rev the engine, pop the clutch and damn the torpedoes. I need to get somewhere, fast.
I had one of those moments today, of ennui spiced with dislocation, and a dash of mild anxiety. It was induced by a chance encounter via email. The email came from a professional networking website and it was chock full of catalysts and memory triggers in the form of "what-have-you-done-since..." blurbs. The past come back to nag me.
The feeling of being underwater has been intense in the nearly four weeks since I was let go from the job. Some days I wander around immersed in the sensation. I put it aside most of the day, as I had my darling daughter with me, and it was good.
But that email brought it all back. I scrolled through the page, looking at all the people who had been somewhere and done something and it was at the end of it that the bubble popped. I started as if awoken while sleepwalking. It took me a brief pause to collect myself to remind me that I was on the couch staring at the laptop screen. I was home.
Home, and wondering just what it is that I had been doing all these years. Picking through the battered scrap heap of my career life to try and piece together that which I could point to and say: I Did This, And I Am Wonderful. The pickings, it seemed to me, were too thin.
Leaning back into the sofa cushions all I could think was that I need to get my stuff together. I need to do something worthwhile and soon, as I have metaphorically been sawing off the limb behind myself. Its only a matter of time before that limb cracks. I need to hurry.
I need to rev the engine, pop the clutch and damn the torpedoes. I need to get somewhere, fast.
05 July 2011
Pillow Talk
I was making the bed, as I am wont to do on laundry day after the sheets are done. For the first time in perhaps, well, the first time ever, I noticed the number of pillows on my bed. Really noticed. Why is this important? you ask. I'll tell you.
I have seven pillows on my bed. Seven. These, on a slightly undersized queen mattress. I am only one person. My head may be big, but it isn't so big as to cover seven pillows. How can this be?
To be sure, two of those pillows are for support of my legs at night, due to a nagging low-grade back problem I have had for years. The dual leg pillows were suggested long ago by my doctor, and it has been beneficial in keeping my spine straight. Which is a necessity. Lower back pain = lack of sleep = Grouchy Gumbo. And no one, especially me, wants to see him.
Two more pillows are graced by my largish melon, also beneficial for the Gumbo neck. I've become accustomed to resting my noggin on two pillows, and find it very difficult to sleep without that arrangement. The ensemble is topped off by a third pillow which I keep over my head for the purpose of blocking out noises and light. My sleeping habits changed over the years, and I went from being a fairly sound sleeper to a somewhat light sleeper. I have the unfortunate quirk of being overly sensitive to sounds when I am trying to concentrate or sleep, in that I find them almost impossible to ignore. So the equivalent of a giant earmuff has become standard equipment in the Gumbo Sleep Palace.
You may have noticed already, my friends, that this leaves two pillows unaccounted for. How to explain that?
The answer, I believe, lies partly in my state of mind relative to my current life situation. I don't have a favored pet, my head isn't that big, I have been living alone for over two years now...but patterns persist, especially if they are ingrained after many years of habit and stasis.
The first pattern is overt, and is that of visible symmetry. The bed simply looked better, more balanced, less open with a set of pillows on each half of the mattress. Having one set on the side where I usually sleep just looks odd. And I never glommed onto the idea of putting one set in the middle of the bed at the head. Honestly, it never occurred to me.
The second pattern is covert, and reflects an inner construct so long embedded it had ceased to register in a conscious manner. It is the pattern of a different life, of a bed shared for years, and the pillows were always there on the other half of the bed. Two pillows representing what used to be the other half of me, a half that has been sundered. That this sundering was necessary is beyond question. That two pillows in a certain place should follow me into the next chapter of my life is a more complicated condition.
I think the two pillows represented a time in my life when I had a peculiar type of certainty, a sense of my person and how I fit into the life I was living. Having to live on my own was such an affecting transition that my subconscious probably clung to anything it could grab that it recognized. Going to bed at night with two pillows on the other half of the bed was eminently familiar, so I stuck with it. When it came time to make my own bed, literally, I went with what I knew.
Standing at the foot of my bed, musing on the wall of seven pillows I have built there, I sensed it may be time for a change. Seven pillows may be comforting, but that many aren't truly necessary. Soon, soon, I think, I'll finally move one set off and move the other to the center at the head. I'll be able to look down at the singularity of those pillows, and realize that they are not as lonely as I feared.
There will be a day when I put my pillows in the center, at the head, and know that I have balance.
I have seven pillows on my bed. Seven. These, on a slightly undersized queen mattress. I am only one person. My head may be big, but it isn't so big as to cover seven pillows. How can this be?
To be sure, two of those pillows are for support of my legs at night, due to a nagging low-grade back problem I have had for years. The dual leg pillows were suggested long ago by my doctor, and it has been beneficial in keeping my spine straight. Which is a necessity. Lower back pain = lack of sleep = Grouchy Gumbo. And no one, especially me, wants to see him.
Two more pillows are graced by my largish melon, also beneficial for the Gumbo neck. I've become accustomed to resting my noggin on two pillows, and find it very difficult to sleep without that arrangement. The ensemble is topped off by a third pillow which I keep over my head for the purpose of blocking out noises and light. My sleeping habits changed over the years, and I went from being a fairly sound sleeper to a somewhat light sleeper. I have the unfortunate quirk of being overly sensitive to sounds when I am trying to concentrate or sleep, in that I find them almost impossible to ignore. So the equivalent of a giant earmuff has become standard equipment in the Gumbo Sleep Palace.
You may have noticed already, my friends, that this leaves two pillows unaccounted for. How to explain that?
The answer, I believe, lies partly in my state of mind relative to my current life situation. I don't have a favored pet, my head isn't that big, I have been living alone for over two years now...but patterns persist, especially if they are ingrained after many years of habit and stasis.
The first pattern is overt, and is that of visible symmetry. The bed simply looked better, more balanced, less open with a set of pillows on each half of the mattress. Having one set on the side where I usually sleep just looks odd. And I never glommed onto the idea of putting one set in the middle of the bed at the head. Honestly, it never occurred to me.
The second pattern is covert, and reflects an inner construct so long embedded it had ceased to register in a conscious manner. It is the pattern of a different life, of a bed shared for years, and the pillows were always there on the other half of the bed. Two pillows representing what used to be the other half of me, a half that has been sundered. That this sundering was necessary is beyond question. That two pillows in a certain place should follow me into the next chapter of my life is a more complicated condition.
I think the two pillows represented a time in my life when I had a peculiar type of certainty, a sense of my person and how I fit into the life I was living. Having to live on my own was such an affecting transition that my subconscious probably clung to anything it could grab that it recognized. Going to bed at night with two pillows on the other half of the bed was eminently familiar, so I stuck with it. When it came time to make my own bed, literally, I went with what I knew.
Standing at the foot of my bed, musing on the wall of seven pillows I have built there, I sensed it may be time for a change. Seven pillows may be comforting, but that many aren't truly necessary. Soon, soon, I think, I'll finally move one set off and move the other to the center at the head. I'll be able to look down at the singularity of those pillows, and realize that they are not as lonely as I feared.
There will be a day when I put my pillows in the center, at the head, and know that I have balance.
08 September 2010
Wearing My App on My Sleeve
You never get a second chance to make a first impression they say,
well, hellfire, I'm in a mess o' trouble because I can't bring myself
to try the first time so what the hell is to be done? Carrying around
my laptop with my picture as the screensaver
won't cut it in most society, many societies, 'cause they would think
"What an eccentric performance!" just like on Monty Python
Oh, no, I know! I know! I got it! Maybe I could velcro an iPad to my jacket
sort of like that video where the guy stuck one to his bike and his wall and stuff
Yeah, that's the ticket, I'll look like a new Social Media bling version of Flava Flav
without the hat or the glasses or the Chronic problem, but I'd have the clock
except it wouldn't be a clock, it would be a digital media filter, hopefully,
there will be an app for that. Wouldn't that be grand?
And its my idea! How do I copyright this? I don't want to carry my laptop
like an over-sized electronic biz card, that just screams geeeeeek
and I wouldn't want anyone to think I was a geek, no uh-uh
I have enough problems meeting peoiple as it is, especially women
but jesus, man, what am I going to do? I won't have a filter, I don't have a filter
wait, it isn't a filter it's a screen, an electronic screen that lets me guard my social butterfly
Hah! I'm no butterfly, or maybe that's the problem: I want to be a butterfly, but I think
I'm a larva, so tell me when you see me, what buttons will you push on my touchscreen?
Please, I hope you hit the one that convinces you that I am really alright to know...
or maybe it needs to convince me, instead.
well, hellfire, I'm in a mess o' trouble because I can't bring myself
to try the first time so what the hell is to be done? Carrying around
my laptop with my picture as the screensaver
won't cut it in most society, many societies, 'cause they would think
"What an eccentric performance!" just like on Monty Python
Oh, no, I know! I know! I got it! Maybe I could velcro an iPad to my jacket
sort of like that video where the guy stuck one to his bike and his wall and stuff
Yeah, that's the ticket, I'll look like a new Social Media bling version of Flava Flav
without the hat or the glasses or the Chronic problem, but I'd have the clock
except it wouldn't be a clock, it would be a digital media filter, hopefully,
there will be an app for that. Wouldn't that be grand?
And its my idea! How do I copyright this? I don't want to carry my laptop
like an over-sized electronic biz card, that just screams geeeeeek
and I wouldn't want anyone to think I was a geek, no uh-uh
I have enough problems meeting peoiple as it is, especially women
but jesus, man, what am I going to do? I won't have a filter, I don't have a filter
wait, it isn't a filter it's a screen, an electronic screen that lets me guard my social butterfly
Hah! I'm no butterfly, or maybe that's the problem: I want to be a butterfly, but I think
I'm a larva, so tell me when you see me, what buttons will you push on my touchscreen?
Please, I hope you hit the one that convinces you that I am really alright to know...
or maybe it needs to convince me, instead.
24 July 2010
Irrelevancy in the New World Order
Recently, it was suggested to me that perhaps a 'sans serif' font may be better for certain types of correspondence. The implication was that, in certain fields of endeavor, suspicions will be aroused by a slight whiff of creativity.
Really.
My inward response was a mental yawn and a 'Screw you', albeit with little malice. I had the same feeling as the time I was told by a job recruiter that having too great a breadth of experience made it harder to get hired. I didn't feel as pissed off this time. Tired, yes.
By a chance encounter on the internet tonight, I was reduced to tears at the sight of prayer flags flapping in the wind, up on what appeared to be a mountain. These flags appeared in a video accompanied by a Buddhist prayer set to music. I couldn't tell you the translation in English, because I do not know it. I can tell you that when I saw those flags, they were so beautiful and calming that I immediately relaxed. It was this relaxation that made me weep, I suppose, from joy and peace and beauty.
In turn, I meditated on the current state of my place in the universe. I considered all that I am, all that I want to be, all the things that interest me and bring me joy. At this point, I realized that I am flirting with irrelevancy.
In an age of 'blobitecture' buildings of high-tech glass and polymers, I want to build stone cathedrals. I yearn for a typewriter, and maybe even a ditto machine. The global appetite for flash and dazzle, for shiny things that curse or explode: this I do not feel in my belly. LeBron and Lindsay, I wish them well, but I won't lose sleep over not knowing the latest ego-born debacle, nor will I care.
I'm not wired for snark or trash, but I do know it sells. Some who know me may think I am a hard-hearted man, but I lack a true killer instinct. Alas it seems the world is more interested in giving money to thuggery and mayhem, and I have no desire to be a gangsta.
Technology has given me access to things and people I may not have otherwise experienced, this is true. I treasure much of what I have found and many whom I have met in this way. There is a lot that leaves me cold, however, and wondering just what it is I am expected to do to survive in this culture of competition. I most likely may always be behind the curve of the latest gadget, the latest app, the slickest new media platform. I try sometimes to be as interested as societal pressure seems to demand of me...but I struggle to keep focus. The amount of energy expended to be the loudest, biggest, brashest (and therefore the most relevant and profitable) astounds me. This expenditure has an unnerving tendency to reduce people to sound bites, becoming parodies of themselves in a bizarre effort to be 'winners' who drown out the reflective quiet that might actually bring peace of mind.
I don't know how to feel, exactly, in this new world order: it wants fluency in programming language and rapid-prototyping; I want to illuminate manuscripts and be a blacksmith.
The issue as I see it: become relevant or fade away. If I can create the digital equivalent of the Book of Kells and a horseshoe, perhaps relevancy won't be far behind. Fading away, well, the thought of it makes me weary.
It makes me want to sit on a mountaintop, watching the flags, praying until the stars go out.
Really.
My inward response was a mental yawn and a 'Screw you', albeit with little malice. I had the same feeling as the time I was told by a job recruiter that having too great a breadth of experience made it harder to get hired. I didn't feel as pissed off this time. Tired, yes.
By a chance encounter on the internet tonight, I was reduced to tears at the sight of prayer flags flapping in the wind, up on what appeared to be a mountain. These flags appeared in a video accompanied by a Buddhist prayer set to music. I couldn't tell you the translation in English, because I do not know it. I can tell you that when I saw those flags, they were so beautiful and calming that I immediately relaxed. It was this relaxation that made me weep, I suppose, from joy and peace and beauty.
In turn, I meditated on the current state of my place in the universe. I considered all that I am, all that I want to be, all the things that interest me and bring me joy. At this point, I realized that I am flirting with irrelevancy.
In an age of 'blobitecture' buildings of high-tech glass and polymers, I want to build stone cathedrals. I yearn for a typewriter, and maybe even a ditto machine. The global appetite for flash and dazzle, for shiny things that curse or explode: this I do not feel in my belly. LeBron and Lindsay, I wish them well, but I won't lose sleep over not knowing the latest ego-born debacle, nor will I care.
I'm not wired for snark or trash, but I do know it sells. Some who know me may think I am a hard-hearted man, but I lack a true killer instinct. Alas it seems the world is more interested in giving money to thuggery and mayhem, and I have no desire to be a gangsta.
Technology has given me access to things and people I may not have otherwise experienced, this is true. I treasure much of what I have found and many whom I have met in this way. There is a lot that leaves me cold, however, and wondering just what it is I am expected to do to survive in this culture of competition. I most likely may always be behind the curve of the latest gadget, the latest app, the slickest new media platform. I try sometimes to be as interested as societal pressure seems to demand of me...but I struggle to keep focus. The amount of energy expended to be the loudest, biggest, brashest (and therefore the most relevant and profitable) astounds me. This expenditure has an unnerving tendency to reduce people to sound bites, becoming parodies of themselves in a bizarre effort to be 'winners' who drown out the reflective quiet that might actually bring peace of mind.
I don't know how to feel, exactly, in this new world order: it wants fluency in programming language and rapid-prototyping; I want to illuminate manuscripts and be a blacksmith.
The issue as I see it: become relevant or fade away. If I can create the digital equivalent of the Book of Kells and a horseshoe, perhaps relevancy won't be far behind. Fading away, well, the thought of it makes me weary.
It makes me want to sit on a mountaintop, watching the flags, praying until the stars go out.
10 December 2008
Woo-Hoo, Everybody! I Got Laid......Off
I didn't duck fast enough. I couldn't outrun the wolves. What is worse, I wasn't even really aware that the wolves were after me. Or maybe it was cheetahs:
I got the "Do you have a minute, in the conference room?" approach just minutes before lunch today. Double suck for me, I get really cranky when I don't eat on a regular basis. I had to go in there with no food in my stomach. Wait, maybe that was a good thing. Nothing to hurl when I felt that punch in the stomach.
The tidal wave of the recessionary economy finally hit the beach I was standing on, so now I am bobbing around in the rip current. After about 16 years of steady employment, I am now out of work for the first time since the early 1990's.
Not to put too fine of a point on it, this sucks donkeys.
I have been in this position before, but I was younger (a lot younger) and I didn't have a kid and a mortgage. My cushion is a little bigger, but so are the obligations. Of course, I am not telling you all anything you don't already know.
Right now I am not as upset as I thought I would be, oddly enough. Yes, this is awful; the short term disruptions (two weeks before Christmas!) are aggravating as hell. I don't look forward to doing the unemployment office dance. I still have bad memories of that from last time. On the other hand, I am trying to remain positive. Truth be known, the position I was in was not the ideal for me. I was chafing under the management style, and struggling with a lack of adequate resources. I was not the best I could be.
Yes, it paid the bills. And I am sick at heart to lose that means of support. Got to make that dolla, or I'm gonna holla, boyeee! Right?
On the drive home, I was thinking about everything and thinking about nothing, trying to keep the worry off my mind. I realized that this is a "crossroads" moment. I could resign myself to possible months of unemployment while trying to replace my old self with the same thing. Or maybe, just maybe, this is a golden opportunity for REINVENTION. Maybe now is the time to truly find that thing that will combine what I want to do with want I need to do.
I can't say that I was filled with an overwhelming peace, or that I had a true epiphany. No beams of light or angels coming out of the sky. But I did feel more at ease. If ever there was a time for positive change this would be it. In the short term, I'll be looking for another architectin' type job (if anyone needs a freelance designer, I'm your man!), but in the long term? Hmm. Perhaps its time to learn to make a different kind of gumbo.
Wish me luck, and peace to all!
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