It's Getting Old

106 days since my last day of work.  In the first few weeks, I was purposeful , making appointments and lists of things to accomplish, and then actually doing some of them.  I aggressively applied for jobs, kept in touch with former colleagues and told whomever would listen of my state of unemployment.

But as the weather improved I turned more to gardening and sitting outside and exercising.  I am exploring all the different sightlines of the backyard, where I can look up from my book and see the rose's pink explosions, and where my neighbor's catalpa tree with its enormous droopy leaves can be enjoyed.  In the old working days the garden was just an outdoor list of tasks and an unobtainable vision of Edenlike splendor I imagined moving toward.  Now, in this lucky summer of excellent weather, I really have nothing better to do than enjoy the squirrels running their avenues of fenceline, and the zooming hummingbirds zipping between neighbors' feeders.  I don't think I have felt this simplicity since childhood.

I have a theory that the world of work is a cleverly designed illusion where we are convinced to willingly perform arduous tasks that fill nearly all our time, in exchange for treasure that we can trade for other treasure.  The truth is that the system only works because the treasure we get is worth less that the time we give to obtain it.  No matter how much we earn, the desire for treasure ratchets up so that we keep working for more.  Maybe it is all a very sensible plot by social engineers to keep us out of trouble, but go off the tracks like I have and you begin to see behind the curtain.  Pardon the now banal comparison, but the movie, the Matrix is much on my mind.

Although I know that eventually new money will be required and somehow I must locate a job, I still regret my best decades were devoted to a job that now seems besides the point.  Alternatively, my next best decade is now and I am determined to enjoy it properly.   There are plants to water, words to string together, and colors to be dabbled in.  Time does not wait.

Our House, Is a Very, Very, Very Fine House

Ever since I stopped going to work, I have become aware of what goes on while most of us are out of the neighborhood, making money.  Our houses are visited throughout the day by an army of workers.  They lavish these boxes with attention; cleaning their interiors, trimming the vegetation that surrounds them, painting and altering the superstructure, adjusting and replacing bits of the circulatory systems that bring in electricity and heat and water and take away the waste products, bringing in new appliances and taking out old, catching animals who dare to invade, and these are just some of the reasons we let people into the house while we are gone.  If I didn't know better, I might surmise that human beings exist to tend these structures.  Certainly much of the money earned in middle class America goes toward the glory of the boxes we live in.

Surely, if we were efficient creatures, we would have invented a one size fits all habitation that needs no special tools or experience to maintain.   Something like the $300 House, designed for the poor.  But we actually expect our houses to express our innermost feelings, through an inexplicable assortment of design and equipment attributes.  Our inability to convey our desires through woodwork, may be the reason why the craftsmen are constantly arriving to try once again.

In my house, it comes down to the kitchen.  The enamelled sink is shedding its enamel and rusting.  The vinyl floor was white when it began, but can't be turned white with any amount of scrubbing.  These are good reasons to get replacements.  But how big should we go?  As any householder knows, one thing leads to another and another.  If we replace the sink, we should really get new countertops.  If we do that, maybe it is time to build the cabinets and counters on the other wall that would make a lot more room, but then that begs the question of whether we should get all new cabinets.  And of course we need a new floor and isn't it time to change all the appliances?  I just find it very hard to go down that long slippery path.    Each choice seems to mean something and demand careful thought.  And at the end we will need to invite at least several workers into our home. 

I know the home building industry creates a lot of jobs, but if we didn't have these terribly complicated structures, wouldn't we need a lot less money?

Everything That Rises Must Converge

Every time I think I am close to stringing a few thoughts together, I get distracted and thoughts go unstrung. This is similar, but not the same as being at loose ends.  I keep being on the verge of cleaning up my room, on the cusp of beginning a big project, but I see now, as I have seen many a time, that anything big takes big effort, and I am better at little efforts.  Hence this blog has become neglected and short shrifted.  The day by day drama of my life is playing out over in blipfoto, where I have faithfully posted a picture a day, plus words, for more than a year.  See http://www.blipfoto.com/grazingllama for those daily ruminations.  But here are supposed to be the big pithier stuff, which seems in short supply. 

The report goes something like this.  Still unemployed.  Do not mind at all.  Looking for work.  It all looks good.  In the meantime, I have discovered almost all jobs create illusions of importance which keep your attention for hoursdaysyearsanddecades, and then when it is over, it is as if it never was.   True of life in general, but at least you get to pick each action item of your nonwork.  I am just amazed by how a whole career is irrelevant as soon as I leave it. 

But never mind.  In the meantime, there is just one distracting day after another, which I have no trouble filling with little nodes of pleasure.  A little eating, then exercise, then music, and gardening and cleaning and art and some job hunting and reading and oh dear it is time to plan dinner and shop and cook and then it is all over until tomorrow.

I embrace work as my feminist right to earn my own living, but after thirty years of this, I have started to see how much of life is lost at work, and question whether we have a decent balance in this country between what we do for money and what we do for love.  Until the money runs out, I'm living it up! 

What's That Word?

It has been two weeks since I have gone  to work.  Two weeks without the requirement of plugging my brain into a computer and participating in the interchange between electrons in a machine and in my head.  When we examine the life of the office worker, the world looks more and more like The Matrix.

There is a transition going on, but it is subtle.  Note I am again connected to these machine electrons.  However, I am one step away from buying a datebook made of paper.  And a few more steps away from returning this box to the status of tool, rather than companion. 

There ought to be a word for the condition I'm in.  The only words I know - retirement and unemployment- reflect the poles of experience.  Retirement is for those who have declared the end to wage earning and planted the flag in the country of leisure.  Unemployment states an absence, perhaps a perilous one.  I don't feel leisurely or financially imperiled.  I do have an urgency about time.  Employment answers the question of what will I do today.  Without that mandate, the whole world is available, crying out for attention.

What will I do today?  Without a plan, the questions keep me up at night.  Yet, I don't have a sense of how I would choose, even if I were to force myself to make a list in order to prioritize.  There are things I do to soothe the anxiety:  Swim laps, clean the kitchen, play music.  These have always been diversions from the harder work that needs more thought or creativity.  But the bigger questions are how do I make a difference, how do I create beauty, and how do I engage in relationships?  Harder still, how to have a balance of all of it?

A job has always narrowed the available time to almost nothing, thereby vitiating the question.   Now, the questions loom large and real.  There isn't much time left.  What to do?

Wait.  The sun is out.  Gotta go!

Finally, Unemployed

I wanted to write something in March, just to say I had been here at least monthly.  Yesterday was my last official work day, although I already had my office, computer and phone taken away, so I didn't go anywhere, just poked around on email, forwarding some last tasks to others.  Today,  meeting new people at my treeplanting activities with Friends of Trees,  I found folks sympathetic, as everyone has been unemployed at some point.  It is like being pregnant, inspiring complete strangers to tell their similar stories.  Of course, I have to be careful not to milk it too much.

Tomorrow I plan to start a number of lists of things to do between now and whenever.  I feel I might get a job too soon, before I have used this moment to assess what I really want.  Already I feel the weight of the endless grind of the work week lifting, as I see that Sunday isn't the end of the weekend, just the beginning of a new week.  My biggest fear is the loss of companionship from not seeing my office mates each day.  I will have to find a way to have regular interaction with others.  For the first time, I realize the purpose of coffee shops.  I'm hoping there will be more words here.

Travelling Cheese

"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.

The Sky is Falling

It has been more than a month since my last post.  In the meantime, my mundane world has altered.  Although the details are important to me, the fact is, only change is interesting and meaningful, stasis is about nothing.  So why do we so resist change?  Why, even when someone forces upon us the very change we seek, do we recoil against it?

These are the questions I have asked repeatedly, since I was told that my job of the last 29 years is about to be eliminated.   It happened suddenly and nonsensically, surprising and angering.  And even though my job has many positives, it has also been very frustrating and repetitive over the years.  Yet fear of the unknown has kept me here, year after year.

So now I am thrust into the next phase of my life, and yet, I cannot help but grasp at the straws of remaining the same.  There is a chance the downsize may happen some different way, so I focus on that possibility for awhile longer.  There is a chance a different position may be offered, so I hope for that.  However, the better part of me knows I should move over into the new realm of "Life After Legal Aid," and leave the what-ifs behind.  I think I had to write this to make my way over here.

So much of my job is about helping people find palatable solutions to serious problems.  Usually I assist them in getting to the next phase of their lives, and they thank me.  Why then, have I learned so little about making transitions in my own life?  I guess I will try and become my own client for the change that will come.  Here we go.