Spoiled Only Child

Oh my god

I am losing my mind around here. Today has been a wild ride that landed me at the edge of the cliff — ready to jump, excited for the new adventure — and then yanked me back from the edge. I am left utterly disappointed about not getting to take the leap. You see, all the laid-off people are about to have their last days here, and we're trying to figure out how we're going to function without them. And a proposal was floated today in which I would end up with a miserable shift that I do not want. And so I offhandedly said to my boss something to the effect of, "I would have taken the severance and left if I'd known this was going to happen." And so he called me into a conference room and told me I could have the severance if I told him in the next few days. Holy shit!

My heart started to race, and I couldn't help thinking: THIS IS MY SIGN! In the next hour, I created a list of reasons for leaving that was pretty damned convincing. Our financial situation continues to deteriorate, and the next round of layoffs could involve little or no severance. Maybe the only way to find my way forward is to step into the unknown, to take the chance, to make it my full-time job to explore my options. This place has become a misery, and what other chance will I have to leave with several months of pay and insurance coverage, plus unemployment benefits? What clearer sign could I ask for?

And then my boss called me back into the conference room and told me, actually, you can't have that severance after all. Legal issues, whatever. I am left utterly deflated. Lord, when will my real sign come? Have I already missed it?

Don't even know what to call this

I really need to get my act together over here. I have fallen into a total funk. I am mopey, blah, emotionless, pathetic. I find myself listening to "Jack and Diane" on the radio — you know, "Life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone" — and thinking how true, how true. I am all weary resignation around here. I need to slap myself across the face and snap out of it.

It all stems, as usual, from stress about work. My god, I am sick of going round and round over the same problem, year in and year out, and never getting any closer to a solution. How is it that I have spent two years going to career counselors and applying for jobs and "making contacts," and I am no closer to getting out of this job? How could that possibly be? My thoughts about the situation have become completely counterproductive. I can think only of what I don't want to do. I don't want to work here anymore; it is just too damned depressing. I don't want to work long hours or get up early or commute more than a few miles. I don't want to sell things. I don't want to be imprisoned in an office.
If we're being honest here, I really don't want to work at all. I'd like to take walks in the sunshine and drink cocktails on the porch. That's what comes to mind when I think about what I want to do.

But of course, I have this standard of living to maintain. And then I wonder whether I am just a coward, allowing this tidy life to hold me captive, and maybe I should just screw it all and move to [insert someplace cool here] and live some kind of Jack Kerouac-type adventure. Really LIVE life, you know? Lean forward into the next adventure. But then of course I am nowhere near ready to take that kind of leap, and maybe it's all just a mirage anyway. Maybe the idea that I could be happier living someplace else, or doing something else, is just bullshit. Maybe your problems and neuroses just follow you wherever you go. I mean, look at Jack Kerouac. He went batshit crazy and drank himself to death, so maybe the whole dharma bum lifestyle wasn't exactly the key to perfect happiness. He was living the true and authentic life. He wasn't imprisoned by his need for a slice of the middle class American dream. And he wasn't happy either.

I guess what I don't understand is why this all feels so hard. Why do things seem so scary? Why do I feel like a prisoner? Why is it so fucking hard to just be happy?

Dead end

Yesterday, my employer finally, finally announced the layoffs we've been waiting on for so many weeks. I had thought there would be some relief in the assurance that I wasn't among the jobless. But there wasn't much. It was a sad, sad day — made worse by a veil of silence that didn't lift until mid-afternoon. We all knew that people were being called into an office and given the ax, but we didn't know who or how many. Strangely, there were no outward signs of what was happening. No distraught people walking through the office, no managers tapping people on shoulders. When it was all over, I was filled more with dread than relief. I had to wonder: Are these people in the first round, who are leaving with several months pay, the lucky ones?

There are absolutely no guarantees from here. We could be looking at more layoffs next month and the month after. And I have a feeling the severance will get worse each time. We are definitely not in the situation of breathing a sigh of relief, regrouping and moving on in a more secure financial situation. We are facing a downward spiral of cost cutting and deteriorating working conditions, reorganizations that may or may not land us in places we want to be, continuing demoralization and fear. I'm beginning to feel like an animal in a cage. In the past year and a half, I've applied for and failied to get more jobs than I care to count. I am left with the feeling that I am utterly unemployable outside of this place. The only place that wants me is a sinking ship. And how much that ship wants me is in question.

I've reduced what I want from my career to two simple criteria. I want to earn at least what I'm making now, which is somewhat decent but is really not setting the bar high, and I want to feel like I'm doing something good for the world. I won't sell widgets, and I definitely won't lie for anyone. Yet somehow I have been unable to find anyone willing to hire me for a job that fits those criteria. Am I really asking for so much? As a person with a college education, 11 years of work experience, a solid reputation and a good bit of intelligence? I am stunned at the magnitude of my failure in this area.

I keep trying to tell myself that this isn't my whole life, that it's not worth worrying about, that things will work out somehow, some way. And for the most part, I've been able to convince myself. But since yesterday, I am sad and afraid. Without this income, I don't think we could afford to keep our house. Maybe we could, but our quality of life would be severely, severely diminished. And our financial future would be in question. I always thought I was steadily working my way up. Now, it feels sometimes like I've worked myself to exactly nowhere, to a dead end. I try to remind myself that often, things don't get better until they seem like they never will. I hope this is my bottom, and that I will soon be on my way up.

Unstuck, finally

I wish I could describe this feeling I get on my awful, awful days at work. I wish I could describe my misery with the kind of wit and originality that Alice has. But I'm not that good. All I can say is that I go to a place where I am completely and utterly stuck. I cannot do anything. I cannot get started on the simplest of tasks. I cannot use the downtime to accomplish personal chores. I cannot just say fuck it and go to the gym. Sometimes, I don't even have the energy to walk down to the snack bar and get a Diet Pepsi. So I am sitting at my desk, endlessly surfing the internet, feeling deader and emptier by the minute. I am upset because I am doing nothing, and no matter how many times I tell myself to just fucking snap out of it and do something, which would instantly solve the entire problem, I cannot. The office comes to feel like a prison, and by the time I leave, I have gone beyond a point of no return. My mind is foggy and the rest of my day is pretty much shot. I spend the evening dreading another endless day at work, wishing I could call in sick but knowing I cannot. My god, how it sucks.

These endless days of lethargy and self-loathing are the worst thing in my life. (And I do recognize that if this is the worst thing in my life, I don't have a hell of a lot to complain about.) But I just don't understand why I have to go through this pointless exercise in misery every month or two. And then when I finally snap out of it, I realize that I am behind on everything, at home and at work. My bills are unpaid, my groceries unbought, my emails and phone messages unanswered, my work piled up. And I think, what the hell have I been doing? Would it have been so goddamned hard to respond to some e-mails while you were sitting there doing absolutely fucking nothing? What is wrong with me? I wonder if there is anyone else in the world with such a ridiculous problem as this.

In other news, the threat of layoffs seems to be inspiring a spending binge here at the Spoiled Only Child household. I am basically a cheap person. And we never ever buy furniture. We did buy a cheap bed frame off Craigslist a few months ago, after about five years of wishing for one, but that's it. And then this weekend we were taking a walk, and we happened to walk past a furniture store with a big MOVING SALE sign in the window, and before I even know what's happened, we have a new living room chair and a new dining room table and are $1100 poorer. Now we did get the deal of the century, and this wasn't the kind of thing that was going to come around twice, but still. When I'm unemployed, am I going to be able to feed this lovely red chair to my family? And of course, in the few days since our impulse purchase, we've had an unexpected car repair. And then tonight, we got a call from the marina where we keep our (very old) sailboat, and yeah, it appears to be sinking.

I hope this is not some kind of metaphor for my life.

Coming up: An update on my second child angst.

Front row seat

I just went upstairs to kiss Mia goodnight. (Mr. SOC is doing the night-night duties.) I gave her a kiss and then she insisted on a hug. She wrapped her arms around me and said, "I love my mommy, but she's going downstairs." Is that cute or what? And she was right. I am downstairs reveling in the fact that I'm not the one reading the stories tonight. She's cute, but I still need a break sometimes.

I remember that the words economy and recession used to be sort of formless abstractions in my mind. But this week, I finally understand what everyone is talking about when they say Americans are worried about the economy and consumer spending is down and blah, blah, blah. My job is in danger and I'm looking around at gas prices close to $4 a gallon and food prices that seem to have gone up 50 percent in a month, and I'm thinking, "Christ, the economy sucks." Things seem to be going to hell in a handbasket, and I have no control over these huge factors that affect my life.

Everyone at work is freaking out. Nobody is doing any work. They're just standing around gossiping about who took the severance package and who's going to be laid off and when an announcement might come. It reminds me somehow of mice on a sinking ship, skittering around frantically with no hope of changing the outcome. Finally, late today, the boss called a meeting to tell us, essentially, that he doesn't know anything and might not for a few more weeks. Well, I guess he does know one thing. Some of us are going to get the ax. We just have to wait in painful limbo to find out who.

I am strangely calm in the midst of all this. I don't know what that means. I like to think I have achieved some divine understanding of what really matters in life. But maybe I'm just in denial, or I have all my hopes on a new job that I'm in the running for. Maybe if that falls through, I'll lose my shit. But for now, it all feels rather surreal. I still can't believe that the career I worked so hard to build has come to this — wondering if I'm going to be allowed to come back tomorrow, or whether I'll be a victim of the corporate bottom line. I can't believe I'm in the middle of all this, that I'm one of those Americans who has a front row seat as the economy goes to hell.

But for tonight, I think I'll just cuddle up on the couch and watch some Netflix. Fuck the economy.

The possibility of unemployment

A few days ago, my boss announced that layoffs or voluntary buyouts could be coming — and soon. I haven't written about this because I can't figure out how I feel about it. I expect myself to be terrified. And during the half-hour that I stood in that meeting, listening to the grim news about revenues and corporate demands that we meet budget, and the myriad ways that people could be forced out of the jobs that they worked so hard to get, and that they poured their souls into, I did feel a claw gripping my gut. I still can't believe that I'm standing right in the middle of all this, watching an industry I loved and planned to devote my life to crumble. I felt a desperate need to find a new job immediately, to find a lifeboat before the ship goes down. It felt for a few minutes there like I had already waited too long, and maybe I have. I drove home that night trying to think of what I would do if I lost my job, wondering what Whole Foods pays the people who work the cheese counter. (I have this fantasy that it would be great to work at the cheese counter, to do nothing but cut up blocks of gourmet cheese all day, to answer shoppers' questions about goat's milk and sheep's milk, and then to come home with a nice wedge of something exotic each night and eat it with a baguette and a bottle of wine. Aaah, fantasies.) What would I do if I was really desperate, I wondered. What expenses could I cut? What would happen to the solid financial future that we have mapped out with our financial planner?

But as the days have passed, I feel less and less stressed about the possibility of layoffs. In reality, the chances that I will be among those who lose their jobs are fairly slim at this point. And there is the possibility of a new and interesting job lurking in the background, which I'll admit doesn't hurt. But I guess I also relish the possibility of being cast out into the wild, of being forced out of the inertia and fear of change that has kept me in one place for so long. If I lose my job and my income, everything will be on the table in a way that it could never be when I have this safe haven to return to. And all that's at stake, really, are material things. I shouldn't stay up at night worrying about those things. It's not worth it. So I am feeling rather zen about the remote possibility of losing my job. This could be an adventure, my naive self is thinking. This could be a lightning bolt from heaven.

But if I get my pink slip tomorrow, or if this other exciting possibility falls through, we'll see if I'm able to maintain my composure.

Can not start

I haven't had one of these days since I announced that I was changing my ways. But today was the perfect storm of procrastination: a Monday, first day back after a four-day weekend, a day without any immediate deadlines. So here I am, it's 3 o'clock and I've done exactly no work today. I have checked Bloglines 9,000 times and I have that familiar foggy feeling behind my eyes. I have a TO DO list sitting right here, and most of the stuff on it is easy. Easy! Much of it doesn't even require me to talk to other human beings. And yet I cannot start. I just cannot. I want to be anywhere but here, but yet I have no idea what I would do if I weren't here. Nothing sounds appealing. All the things I need to do in my life are so overwhelming that I can't stand to do any of them. I'm writing this in hopes that it will jolt me out of my fugue state and back into a world where "renew library books" doesn't sound like the most terrifying thing I've ever been asked to do.