Jobless, Clueless, Penniless

I have been at my current position for about 10 years.  I have been in my current field for over 15 years.   Basically, all but one of my "grown-up" jobs have been within the same industry.  I love my current job and my current boss but the decline in business has finally come to a head for our little office. 

At the end of this month, I am jobless.

I am trying to remain calm but minor episodes of madness seem to keep bubbling up and leaking out  when I least expect it.  I imagine this would have been a lot easier to handle without the fact that life has been imitating a caged chimpanzee for the past couple of years, flinging all kinds of crap on me at every opportunity.  Still, I am trying my best...breathe in...breathe out...put on my hazmat suit...damned chimpanzees!

I go about updating my resume, realize I haven't done so since I was in my twenties, chuck the whole thing and start fresh.  Quite symbolic, wouldn't you say?  I contact all of my, well...contacts and start faxing and emailing resumes, filling out applications and making phone calls.  Attempting a positive attitude, I envision potential interviews and practice prospective interview questions.  I feel confident, completely prepared to being the job hunt.  I go to sleep dreaming of perfect interviews and jobs so surreally perfect, there should be a fairy godmother hovering at my shoulder. 

Early the next morning, I have a phone interview set up.  Though still somewhat groggy, I answer the phone in my most professional phone voice and my first interview begins.  The interviewer asks me to list some of the computer systems I have worked with and I draw a blank.  I actually respond by saying, "I'm not sure, what does my resume say?".  I then proceed to try to lighten things up when she talks of the long hours tied to a desk and phone by stating,  "I prefer to do my work sitting down, that's where I shine.".  It sounded funny in my head.  By the end of the call, she says they will make their decision by the end of the week and someone should get back to me by Friday afternoon.  I thank her and then brilliantly ask, "What company is this?".

I realize then that in this new reality, I am clueless.

There is one other issue that makes my job search less than promising.  Because of the crap-slinging life chimp, I am dealing with some pretty horrific finances.  I work in a fiduciary field and my credit will definitely be considered.  If my credit history were viewed as a line chart, you would see a slowly elevating line with some minor dips in the beginning but basically a softly inclining hill of a line.  Then, as of last year, you would see the line drop.  Not a slanting decrease but more like there was an error with the printer, resulting in a vertical line appearing and effectively stopping all other information from printing through.

In other words, I am penniless.

So, if you hear of anyone seeking a jobless, clueless, penniless person with a mostly positive, mildly crazy demeanor who has lots of job skills but apparently can't recall them without having to use her own resume as a cheat sheet...I am your girl!

Wish me luck...I have a feeling I'll need it.

Hair?

I was cleaning out a box that had yet to be unpacked since my move last year.  (A lot of you are probably shuddering at the thought of all those unpacked boxes stacked in my garage for over a year now)  Not the point to this post though so I shall continue.

I found my old yearbook and as I was going through it, I decided to see if I could locate some of the people from my senior class.  (This wasn't really about nostalgia or even vague curiosity.  This was all about avoiding having to keep unpacking the damn box.)

Through the privacy invading phenomena of Facebook and Google, I was able to locate most of these past phantoms.  It was disturbingly easy, even for someone as technologically challenged as myself.  (I wonder if I can claim that as a disability?)  Anyway, back to the post.

Obviously, over the broad spectrum of years and geography, lifestyles, relationship statuses and personal philosophies have altered a bit.  Amongst students of human nature, I suppose it could even warrant an interesting if irrelevant study of human nature.  Well, maybe not a study, more like a short unsubstantiated observation.  Since I'm not a student of human nature, unless you count people watching (which I happen to be great at), this is still not what inspired this post.

My high school years occurred in the late eighties, where all the girls had big hair and all the boys had, well, big hair.  Now that it's 2012, I noticed most of us made the socially responsible decision to tone down our earlier grooming practices.  Some of us, however, have clung to our teen looks with a death grip as secure as the NRA reps with their guns.  Others have left their coifs behind by force rather than personal awareness of themselves or our planet's atmospheric health.

Coincidentally, these victims are all male.  They were all attacked by the same culprit.  Who was this villain, you ask?  Why, it was male pattern baldness, I answer.  Although, that may just be an alias used to give a semblance of blamelessness since these particular males come from an era where excessively long tresses were routinely teased and sprayed into submission.  It's possible the baldness was simply a result of hair abuse or a protest by the poor follicles to the humiliation they endured for years.  (Lest you forget, long, ratted out hair for males turned into mullets and rat-tails.)

Either way, bald is really not that bad.  In a world where shaved heads are considered a fashion statement, these individuals should be fairing quite well.  The problem?  Women aren't the only ones obsessed with their youth.  (gravity defying breasts, frozen faces, inner tube-esque lips...)  Men have a mysterious relationship with their youth that seems to center primarily around their hair, their car and their penis.

There's the Friar Tuck, the combover, the roadkill...err...toupee, camouflage in the form of trucker caps, cowboy hats, bandannas...and many many more.  To me, a shaved head shows a man who has come to terms with the inevitable and has decided to face it with his balls in tact.  Still, this particular person's choice seemed at once, rebellious and sad:

Graciously, while leaning heavily on my strong command of the English language, I remain silent.

Promises. Promises.

Recently, I promised myself I would write more often.  I am fully aware that hasn't been the case.  I've made a lot of promises to myself in the past year and to others as well.  I haven't really kept those either.  I could blame the loss of my husband last year, the move to a new house and the financial and emotional abandonment of the old one, the pending bankruptcy due to astronomical medical bills while Hubby was in critical care, or even my own ever worsening crappy health ...Yep, I could point my finger at any of those things or all of them, but it wouldn't be true.

The reason I've failed to follow through is because I didn't really mean it.  I say what I say, I do what I do, I promise what you want to hear from me but I'm just going through the motions.  I don't have good days and bad days.  I have bad days and days when I feel nothing at all...depressing huh?

But this past week or so, something changed.

Last year, my life was altered so drastically, I've felt as though I haven't been able to catch my breath ever since, but last week...I heard myself sigh.  I could feel the air filling my lungs, all the way to the bottom.  I know it isn't much but I am starting to feel again.  I hadn't realized how numb I'd become.

Why the change?  My baby girl, at 19 yrs old, gave birth to her own little girl last week.  She's beautiful, healthy and she's my granddaughter.  At 41, I became a widow and my whole world blew apart.  Now at 42, I became a grandmother and somehow, my world, though still a wasteland, might possibly be rebuilt.  This tiny little baby with her grabby fingers, soft delicate skin, hungry cries, and poopy diapers has brought me hope.

So I will make new promises, about writing more, caring more, doing more...And I will try my best to keep them.  But, if nothing else, I will never forget the moment I saw my precious little grandchild for the first time and how suddenly I could breathe again.  I will never forget how that little baby was able to reach past everything right to my heart..I PROMISE.

Welcome to the family, baby Nari!  That's right...they named her after me.

She has ten little fingers too!