Saturday, February 21, 2009

Gray Day

I am so up and down. Yesterday was a good day. I went back to Cooper to turn in the legal documents that let me get my severance package. I was greeted with hugs and smiles. I turned in my fancy gold name badge and the operations manager (who personally hired me) put it in her desk and told me she would not be taking my name off it, that she looked forward to being able to hand it back to me one day. She emphasized that I am very very very very very (I think there were five very's) re-hirable and that I really do need to make sure I keep in touch. I asked if it was okay if I went to visit my department and I was told of course, that I have free reign to roam the clinic that day and to come up to visit everyone at any time, that I am always welcome. So I went to see the girls and to talk to Dr. Cannaday (the doctor I worked with). I almost felt sorry for them for a moment. At least the gavel has fallen for me. Their future remains tedious and uncertain, hovering on the edge of this economic cliff. I told them their pot lucks are going to suck now that half the office is gone. That got a laugh.

I spent the rest of the day with my bestie Heather, who is turning into a very enthusiastic amateur photographer. We had a little lunch together and went walking in a wooded area to mull over the complexities of life, such as how to deal with ill parents and raising teenaged boys to understand the complexities of sexuality and being safe without imparting a sense of either tacit permission or overt judgement. She took a lot of pictures, which was fun and relaxing to watch. We noticed such different things. I am fascinated by contrasts, and if I had a camera, would have been capturing the three tiny bright red berries amidst the dead bramble or the solitary green leaf still tenaciously holding onto its branch in the midst of winter. I also enjoy texture contrasts and patterns...the curving vines amidst the straight trees, the scatter of brush along a sooty forest floor. She, however, was all about the light - the way even dead things shimmer silver when the illumination is just so. It was wonderful to see the world through her eyes, to get new perspective. She took many photographs of me. I am not the youthful thing I once was and don't photograph as well as I did in my youth, but am still a vain enough creature to enjoy the experience of being the center of attention. I had a good time with it.

Today is a gray morning. I woke in the middle of the night unable to sleep, worrying about what is to come. The idiot politician who spoke at Columbia University yesterday said this will be a downturn worse than the Great Depression. What is wrong with people, saying something like that in public, sending an already jittery economy into a tailspin of panic as investors try to decide whether to cut their losses and pull all their cash back close to their chest or risk losing even more by leaving it where it is. Its time to stop harping on how BAD things are. Yeah. They are bad. Life will and does go on. We are all going to have to eat hamburger for awhile instead of steak. Woe is us. I am so SICK of worrying this to death. I am out of work. Joe is out of work. Near as I can tell, we are healthy. Laughing daily. Not going hungry. Paying our bills. Making plans for the future. Holding onto hope. So let's hold onto it and let the fretting go. For all my fretting, things always turn out exactly as they are going to. I am sick to death of feeling tense and frightened. I don't even fully understand what I am frightened of. I just know when Joe worries, I worry. When the world heaves and sighs and groans, I hold on and wonder what on earth is happening. What am I afraid of?

So I am a little blue today, mourning my job again, wondering if I will honestly ever go back. Life has a way of moving on most of the time and its usually a good thing. But there were no interview calls yesterday and the second interview hint didn't come to fruition. Doesn't mean it won't next week, but the high of feeling like I may land on my feet without having to apply for unemployment is a coming down again. I just dread any thought of landing in an ordinary job where people are tired and run down and unenthusiastic. I got so used to working somewhere in which everyone feels such pride in where they work and what they do. I don't want to surrender that.

No idea what all we will do today. Not a good day particularly for yard work. I guess I can clean house. I feel like seeing my mother or being alone to brood. Mood scale is very gray.

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