"Who Moved My Cheese" was published in 1998 and at the timewas considered a brilliant tool for coping with change. You don't hear much about that book anymore, but I need to order it from the library, to make sure it doesn't have a secret I can use. Ever since being told I was losing my job, I have been in a state of disbelief and controlled euphoria. I really could use a change. Maybe not one that takes away all my money, but if that is the one that is given to me, I should make the most of it. Instead, people keep worrying about health insurance for me. "What about it?" I ask grumpily, "I'm not sick, have never been sick, why must I assume the worst?" For some reason, this aspect of unemployment really irritates me. Should I really devote time and worry time, over whether I might get sick and be forced to pay for, or even worse not be able to pay for, feeling awful, suffering and dying? Is physical pain and suffering less painful if you are insured?
Regardless of the stupid health care dilemma, which I blame 100% on the Republican party, I do suffer from the retrospective of my life that is playing in all the cinemas of my mind. When facing a big change, suddenly everything that came before this moment threatens to coalesce into a big fat evaluation of my life. "So this is where you end up, thirty years out of law school? One lousy job, where you made lousy money, after hundreds of poor people pass through your door, just as poor going in as coming out, and then they fire you."
But the actual truth is that I don't feel that bad. Sure I'll miss the swimming pool in the town where I work, and I'll miss my co-workers, with their cameraderie as we face an impossible task each day: how to make a difference. It must be like fighting the war in Afghanistan, only without the possibility of being blown up by a bomb. However, after the shock of not going to work wears off, I think I will be able to adjust. At the very least, there will be the job search to structure my days. Then there will be the entire of book of other stuff I have always wanted to do, but never gave myself the time to do. If it turns out that that my many hobbies and interests cannot sustain me and unemployment and savings run out, then I will need to find a job, any job. Until then, I will allow myself to just be.
