And just like that, I’m out of a job.
After six years with this company and nineteen years of scrambling over and over again for any kind of job at all, it is surreal to get cut loose so suddenly, and to care so little. My hair has turned quite gold from grief. (Also, it wasn’t just me. There were 24 of us altogether. I am the only one who is happy.) The job was good while it lasted, but I stayed on the ride just a little too long. The truth is that this was the longest job I’ve ever had, and I do not know how to handle longevity. I like to think it’s something I could have grown accustomed to in time, if departmental changes hadn’t intervened. Or maybe everything would have stayed the same and nothing would have gotten fixed, because I was so numb by the end that I was actually looking up unemployment benefits the night before the layoff call.
It might not seem like it, but this is actually a good thing. I stopped drawing years ago. I stopped writing. I stopped making music. I’ve barely been reading. I’ve forgotten who I am, and this is something that has become increasingly obvious, if not exactly fixable, as time has gone on. I have known for years that this is not what I want to do with my life but I would never have left on my own, so I guess my Publishing Angel got tired of waiting for me to finish my novels and kicked me out the door herself. I’m mildly worried. I’m also hopeful, energized, experiencing happiness for the first time in three years. I have made so little progress on my first book since finishing the rough draft, but I have been thinking about nothing but that world and those characters for the last week and a half. And that really is a joy. I don’t know what’s coming next, and maybe I don’t want to. The hell with this. I’m gonna live…………………
……………….or that was the theory. In reality things aren’t great, chiefly because my ship got stuck in the unemployment doldrums and I don’t know how to get out. I have terrible insomnia, which means I’ve been sleeping all day almost every day of this past week. My weekly to-do list is shot to hell. Likewise my ambitious proclamations. Freedom isn’t free, not when there are so many things to do and money still to be made and all I want to do is crawl into a hole in the ground with my cat and my books. I’m tired and confused, and this is absolutely six years of corporate burnout and twenty years of suppressed mental illness having their say. I am, in short, not doing well, though you could read the above paragraph and reasonably conclude that I haven’t been doing well for twenty years.
I am at heart an optimist, which means I am profoundly unrealistic, which means I have set myself yet another ambitious to-do list for this coming week. If all goes well and I don’t give in to my worst instincts, this week will be my week of deep-cleaning the apartment and getting my shit together. As for that insomnia, ZzzQuil has so far proven ineffective (probably because I’m fucking passed out all day), so I’m going to try to fix it the old-fashioned way. I’ve been coming around on the idea of reading Pride and Prejudice in its entirety for the first time even though it made it onto one of my anti-TBRs – I think I tried years ago, as I seem to remember snippets of it, but I’ve never read the whole thing – so this seems like the perfect opportunity to hole up with the book and the insomnia. It also just occurred to me right this minute that I should add an unemployment check-in post to my floundering publication schedule, because otherwise there’ll be nothing to hold me accountable.
The good news: I have actually caught up on my review backlog (mostly, lol – I was supposed to review Mirrored Heavens this week, but I concluded mid-write that I am going to have to reread Mirrored Heavens), so I have at least been able to cross my Alias Grace and The Cartographers drafts off my list. Those will be posted in the coming weeks. My blogging inspiration seems to have gotten her second wind because I cracked through those two reviews, plus this post, a lot faster than I thought I would. I’m back, baby. You have to take the victories where you can.
Moar good news: GBBO SERIES 15 FUCKING SLAPS ohhhhhhhh I want Sumayah to win so badly ;o; I’m so far into the hype train that I didn’t even notice there was an American in the tent, or I didn’t until Decider pointed it out to me. I am expecting great things from this season, based on Sumayah’s duck alone. Next Friday can’t get here soon enough, though in the meantime I at least have the rest of series 14 to console me while I wait.
Things I’ve Actually Been Doing
In fairness to me, the last week hasn’t been entirely sleeping and eating. If this is the death of this job, I sure had a hell of a time at the wake. Wake Part I: My final day of work ended with me Ubering into Baltimore proper to meet half of JUNEAU BLACK asd;jkfjr IYKYK, more on that in next week’s post.
Wake Part II: Started the day after unemployment off right with loco moco, which actually I’ve never had before, and learned that I like pineapple soda even though I crave neither pineapples nor soda in the course of my daily life.
Still got leftover malasadas in the fridge. Saving them up carefully. Don’t ask me for what.
Wake Part III: Eat the Menu live!!! This really was completely random but perfectly timed, because Heather and I bought the tickets back in April, when I still thought the department was doing great. This was our second Try Guys show; the first was the Legends of the Internet show in 2019, when they were touring with He Who Must Not Be Named.
The show was amazing. I didn’t know I could scream as loud as I did when Trolley Problems came on. I am now the proud owner of a Trolley Problems sweater and an Eat the Menu pin. But also these dudes really made me want Five Guys, curse them.
Then I came home and what the hell are all these people doing in my Checkers line. I have made a habit lately of stopping by Checkers to buy a lemonade for the hour-long drive from the Metro station to my apartment and since I’m always there around midnight the line is always empty but tonight it was jam-packed and I was quite peeved. Literally why were there so many people there that night. They couldn’t all have come from the Try Guys show.
Onward and upward. I have given myself a week of grace and taken so much-needed rotting time. Things can only go up from here.
