Three days into unemployment... again.... and I'm having difficulty relaxing. Hmm.
Let me be clear about this. I am upset about losing another job -- demoralized, worried and a tad humiliated. I shouldn't say I lost it, because that just reminds me of an old Bobcat Goldthwait joke: "I didn't lose my job. I know where it is. It's just that when I go there, there's some other guy doing it."
But let's be honest. You all knew I hated that job, and on some level, I feel like one of the children of Israel, skipping into the desert after Moses and not even bothering to whine, "Are we there yet? Yes, the Pharaoh finally let my people go.
(Of course, you know what happened to them. They went a little nuts, started worshiping golden cows and really pissed God off. Jehovah gave them the longest time-out in history: forty years, just wandering around the desert. No pudding for them, either.)
So I have really mixed feelings at this point. If it weren't for the money thing -- and the health insurance thing -- I would be deliriously happy to never work outside my home again. I say "outside my home" because I do stay busy.
But right now i'm having trouble shifting gears. I'm so used to watching that clock in my head, the one that says in ticks of utter dread, "You have to go to bed now because you have to get up at 6 am.... you have to get off the computer now and make dinner...." The one that says, "Hurry, hurry, HURRY!"
If you sacrifice eight hours a day (more if you count prep and travel time) to the Almighty Dollar -- and if, like me, you count your "real" life only as the stuff you can cram into those other hours, and resent things like sleep and even showering because they take away precious moments you could be painting or making boxes or writing or stuffing monkeys while watching reruns of Law & Order -- you know what I mean. "Gotta" seems to rule your life, as in "I gotta get this done." "Should" comes in a close second: "I should clean the oven/vacuum the carpet/scour the tub/organize my tupperware/wash the walls/clean out the litter box/take out the garbage/chop the everlasting carrots and celery...."
You feel like you're running a race against the clock. Gotta, gotta, gotta. Should, should, should.
Luckily for me, the "gotta's" are the things I want to be doing. And I am never happier than when I'm at home, getting all that fun stuff done. It's just that ever-present, free-floating pressure that bothers me. Even on the weekends, I'm so damned aware of the sands running through the hour glass that I feel like I rush, rush, rush.
Now the pressure is off. Or is it? Because I know that the clock is still running, even if on a different level entirely. I've got sixty days (actually fifty-seven now) to enjoy the freedom of getting a paycheck -- meager though it is -- without having to do a damn thing I don't want to do for 24 hours a day. At some point, I will have to do something about my future in the workforce of America.
But I haven't been able to relax yet. And that's what I loved about being unemployed for such a long stretch before. The sheer joy of not feeling pressured to be doing something productive as efficiently as possible every waking moment. The freedom to nap at three in the afternoon without worrying that I won't be able to sleep that night.
During my last unemployment, I spent a solid hour at my kitchen window watching the guys across the street cut down a tree that must have been at least three stories high. I was riveted to that window. I thought they just cut the base and yelled Timber, getting the hell out of the way. But they don't.
They cut most of the branches off first. Then one guy in a safety harness climbed to the very top, and sawed off the first four or five feet. He then tied a rope around it, and he and the other guys standing around below carefully lowered the section to the ground. Then the process repeated itself, until the whole tree was horizontal. The most interesting part was when the top guy got to the bigger thickness of the trunk, and had to use a chain saw.
How often do you get to watch a man tied to a tree, twenty feet in the air, wielding a chain saw?
(Truthfully, I don't know how much of my fascination was in waiting to see if the tree-hugger would fall, or if a section would come crashing down onto the roof of the house a mere five feet away. It's the same lurid fascination that makes us watch NASCAR races, police chases and America's Funniest Home Videos. We wanna see that guy belly flop off the trampoline into the swing set.)
My point, however, is that having the luxury of time, I could enjoy the death and removal of a big honkin' tree. And now I know how they do it without crushing a car. Learning is fun, you know.
I'm trying to get back that relaxed pace of simply being, and not constantly doing. I sleep as late as I want. I get up and eat my Cheerios while I scour the tv offerings for the day. Yesterday I found "Reality Bites" on HBO and watched it again while stuffing a monkey. I had forgotten how clever that movie was, though at the old age of 47, that twenty-something angst is funny to me now in ways they never intended, and bittersweetly nostalgic as well.
I have been indulging in old episodes of "No Reservations" on In Demand. (I think In Demand programming is the bee's knees, perhaps second only to the iPod and Netflix as the top societal advances of the last 50 years.)
I would kill Anthony Bourdain, the host, if I knew I would get his job. I wouldn't even quibble about eating the disgusting things, too, if it meant I got to see as much of the world as he does, always working in a dinner or two at some fabulous four-star restaurant where he gets to sample everything on the menu. I'd have to go into serious training, though, to drink as much as Tony does. I assume they turn the camera off when he starts to slur his words.
But I do enjoy watching Tony eat a whole pig with drunken Greeks -- or Italians, or Czechs or Phillipinos, cause where ever in the world Tony goes, it seems someone is always slaughtering a hog for him, as if he's a traveling minor deity. How cool is that?
He's funny, too, in slyly confidential way. I have to admire a man who can eat bratwurst while managing to work in a Rocco Siffredi Love Bus reference, or slip in an off-hand joke about three-ways and reach-arounds while eating tiny lamb chops from a sheep that was walking around just minutes before.
Anyway.... it's now three a.m. and I'm not yet in bed. Maybe I am finally beginning to lose that inner time bomb.
But tomorrow, I really gotta take a shower
Let me be clear about this. I am upset about losing another job -- demoralized, worried and a tad humiliated. I shouldn't say I lost it, because that just reminds me of an old Bobcat Goldthwait joke: "I didn't lose my job. I know where it is. It's just that when I go there, there's some other guy doing it."
But let's be honest. You all knew I hated that job, and on some level, I feel like one of the children of Israel, skipping into the desert after Moses and not even bothering to whine, "Are we there yet? Yes, the Pharaoh finally let my people go.
(Of course, you know what happened to them. They went a little nuts, started worshiping golden cows and really pissed God off. Jehovah gave them the longest time-out in history: forty years, just wandering around the desert. No pudding for them, either.)
So I have really mixed feelings at this point. If it weren't for the money thing -- and the health insurance thing -- I would be deliriously happy to never work outside my home again. I say "outside my home" because I do stay busy.
But right now i'm having trouble shifting gears. I'm so used to watching that clock in my head, the one that says in ticks of utter dread, "You have to go to bed now because you have to get up at 6 am.... you have to get off the computer now and make dinner...." The one that says, "Hurry, hurry, HURRY!"
If you sacrifice eight hours a day (more if you count prep and travel time) to the Almighty Dollar -- and if, like me, you count your "real" life only as the stuff you can cram into those other hours, and resent things like sleep and even showering because they take away precious moments you could be painting or making boxes or writing or stuffing monkeys while watching reruns of Law & Order -- you know what I mean. "Gotta" seems to rule your life, as in "I gotta get this done." "Should" comes in a close second: "I should clean the oven/vacuum the carpet/scour the tub/organize my tupperware/wash the walls/clean out the litter box/take out the garbage/chop the everlasting carrots and celery...."
You feel like you're running a race against the clock. Gotta, gotta, gotta. Should, should, should.
Luckily for me, the "gotta's" are the things I want to be doing. And I am never happier than when I'm at home, getting all that fun stuff done. It's just that ever-present, free-floating pressure that bothers me. Even on the weekends, I'm so damned aware of the sands running through the hour glass that I feel like I rush, rush, rush.
Now the pressure is off. Or is it? Because I know that the clock is still running, even if on a different level entirely. I've got sixty days (actually fifty-seven now) to enjoy the freedom of getting a paycheck -- meager though it is -- without having to do a damn thing I don't want to do for 24 hours a day. At some point, I will have to do something about my future in the workforce of America.
But I haven't been able to relax yet. And that's what I loved about being unemployed for such a long stretch before. The sheer joy of not feeling pressured to be doing something productive as efficiently as possible every waking moment. The freedom to nap at three in the afternoon without worrying that I won't be able to sleep that night.
During my last unemployment, I spent a solid hour at my kitchen window watching the guys across the street cut down a tree that must have been at least three stories high. I was riveted to that window. I thought they just cut the base and yelled Timber, getting the hell out of the way. But they don't.
They cut most of the branches off first. Then one guy in a safety harness climbed to the very top, and sawed off the first four or five feet. He then tied a rope around it, and he and the other guys standing around below carefully lowered the section to the ground. Then the process repeated itself, until the whole tree was horizontal. The most interesting part was when the top guy got to the bigger thickness of the trunk, and had to use a chain saw.
How often do you get to watch a man tied to a tree, twenty feet in the air, wielding a chain saw?
(Truthfully, I don't know how much of my fascination was in waiting to see if the tree-hugger would fall, or if a section would come crashing down onto the roof of the house a mere five feet away. It's the same lurid fascination that makes us watch NASCAR races, police chases and America's Funniest Home Videos. We wanna see that guy belly flop off the trampoline into the swing set.)
My point, however, is that having the luxury of time, I could enjoy the death and removal of a big honkin' tree. And now I know how they do it without crushing a car. Learning is fun, you know.
I'm trying to get back that relaxed pace of simply being, and not constantly doing. I sleep as late as I want. I get up and eat my Cheerios while I scour the tv offerings for the day. Yesterday I found "Reality Bites" on HBO and watched it again while stuffing a monkey. I had forgotten how clever that movie was, though at the old age of 47, that twenty-something angst is funny to me now in ways they never intended, and bittersweetly nostalgic as well.
I have been indulging in old episodes of "No Reservations" on In Demand. (I think In Demand programming is the bee's knees, perhaps second only to the iPod and Netflix as the top societal advances of the last 50 years.)
I would kill Anthony Bourdain, the host, if I knew I would get his job. I wouldn't even quibble about eating the disgusting things, too, if it meant I got to see as much of the world as he does, always working in a dinner or two at some fabulous four-star restaurant where he gets to sample everything on the menu. I'd have to go into serious training, though, to drink as much as Tony does. I assume they turn the camera off when he starts to slur his words.
But I do enjoy watching Tony eat a whole pig with drunken Greeks -- or Italians, or Czechs or Phillipinos, cause where ever in the world Tony goes, it seems someone is always slaughtering a hog for him, as if he's a traveling minor deity. How cool is that?
He's funny, too, in slyly confidential way. I have to admire a man who can eat bratwurst while managing to work in a Rocco Siffredi Love Bus reference, or slip in an off-hand joke about three-ways and reach-arounds while eating tiny lamb chops from a sheep that was walking around just minutes before.
Anyway.... it's now three a.m. and I'm not yet in bed. Maybe I am finally beginning to lose that inner time bomb.
But tomorrow, I really gotta take a shower
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