I made it out to Point Reyes yesterday as planned but can’t tell you if the ground was indeed nice and verdant. You need sunlight to fully gauge that, lots of it, and the sun just didn’t want to come out. I did get a few nice pictures of various flora and fauna in the fog but otherwise I mostly wish I’d waited until some other time. Like today, when the sun is nice and bright and ha-ha-in-your-face here in Oakland and, according to the internet, on the coast too. Poop.
Yesterday was alas somewhat characteristic of this week, which hasn’t been as satisfying as the one preceding. I’ve been plenty busy, sure: meetings with other job-seekers, a Drupal user group get-together in SF, the meditation group - no grass growing under these feet, right? I’m just not sure what all the busy-ness amounts to in the short-term. I didn’t get one of the jobs I interviewed for and the other one hasn’t been heard from since that “still deciding” note last Friday. I wasn’t heartbroken about the first and if the second doesn’t come through I won’t be either but nonetheless: your heart can stay intact and your feet always in motion but you still have to pay the bills, you know? So if by “less satisfying” what I might actually mean is “discouraged,” yeah, there’s some of that.
On the bright side, it looks like starting next week I’ll be part of a newly-formed job-search accountability group: a small knot of people meeting regularly to discuss progress in their individual job searches and generally help stave off the isolation and apathy that comes with long-term unemployment. I don’t know how well it’s going to work, me not being much of a group person when anything important’s at stake, but I know two of the members already and they’re both very on-the-ball types so I’m expecting to participate in kind. It certainly can’t hurt to give it a try.
Until then I’ve got plenty to do today and tomorrow and the day after. Plenty. That’s if I have the energy for it; yesterday’s trip, a mere 7 hours, left me inexplicably exhausted and I’m still feeling it this morning. Schedule-wise today is a light one - lunch with a friend and that’s it – for which I’m very glad. But I don’t like feeling so drained, especially not on a day full of the promise of glorious California sunshine.
However drab and spent I might feel, I’m probably still leaps and bounds above my sister now she’s returned from her emergency trip to PA. She sent a long detailed email yesterday about her experience there and my mother’s condition; the news is not good and she’s 98% sure it’s only going to get worse. I believe her. None of us are looking forward to what comes next.
Regardless of what exactly that will be, I don’t expect to be writing about it again here. Far as I’m concerned it’s a private matter from now on. But if the frequency of my entries drops, or the tone grows darker than usual, or if it seems like I’m struggling with something I can’t talk about – this is likely why. Family stuff. You know.
The last couple of weeks have stood out from the regular pattern for me, in spite of the family stuff or maybe in part because of it. (Probably because. I’m often the last to see the link between cause and effect when it most matters.) I wouldn’t primarily call this stretch trying though that’s definitely been one aspect; all weeks are trying when you don’t have a stable source of income. I’d be more inclined to say simply that it's been emotionally charged in a way I haven’t experienced in a good long while, presuming that is the emotions range beyond anger and its kissing cousins.
And in this case they do, and how. For two weeks now I’ve felt like a dam inside me is ready to burst in a way it hasn’t in years. It may actually burst in the near future or it may not, I can’t tell – one effect of taking Lexapro long-term is that a lot of the time the breakdown you think you might be about to have or should be having just doesn’t come. And while a lot of the time that’s a good thing, not all breakdowns are unhealthy; some are downright necessary, in fact.
All I know is that for months I’ve been praying – literally praying, and I’m not much the praying type – for help in opening myself, in letting drop some of the hard-heartedness I’ve built up during years of sobriety to compensate for being naturally thin-skinned. Help in seeing clearly some of the lies I live by, foremost the one that says anything I do to protect myself from being hurt is justified even though it may result in someone else being hurt instead. Help in simply not acting like an asshole so much of the time.
And two weeks ago in the meditation group I felt like I got an answer to that prayer. Or the beginnings of one. Got it just by being there, really; I guess I was finally ready for it. But now I’ve got it I’m not sure what comes next. I suspect it might be as simple as just staying out of my own way, or getting to higher ground if and when the dam does burst, and not being too much of an idiot while picking up the pieces afterward. I don’t know. I find it ever so much easier to write about in this journal than I do talking face to face. I’ve kind of lost the nerve for that in my life and don’t know how, or if, I’ll get it back.
So yeah. Out of the pattern. The kind of thing that can really get in your way on a job search, right? But you don’t get to pick when moments of enlightenment – or even just opening – are going to strike. Maybe just dealing with it is what the busy-ness amounts to in the short term. See? I told you I have plenty to do.
Comments