My soul got sucked out of me again.
It happens sometimes. It hasn't happened in a while. Or it's been happening for so long I've forgotten what it was like to have one.
I think it started last December. Not the one three months ago, but the one fifteen months ago. The day they coralled everyone into the conference room and then Neil walked in and told us flat out he wasn't there to deliver good news, so he just went right ahead and said it. They'd be closing the office in June so we'd better stick around until our appointed time to talk to our appointed person and receive our appointed deadline and severance agreement. Then everyone's minds clicked back to the security officer parked in the car outside. Suspecting, I suppose, that someone would cause trouble, but if one person did, wouldn't there be a riot and would one fat guy in a rented suit really be enough to control the situation? Mostly people were quiet with angry looks on our faces and everyone looked around for shock or devastation or a smile or something on someone else's face to let us know that we'd registered it, we weren't dreaming, or it was a joke. I think one person burst into tears. I know my boss cried hysterical, howling yelps every day for at least a week. Sobs drawn from the pit of her chest, as deep as the sobs that came through her closed door the day her mother-in-law died. As for me, I drove packed in invisible cotton straight to Nate's store and asked him to guess why I was out of work early that day and his was the only face that gave me a look that told me it was real.
Honestly? I haven't been quite right ever since.
Oh, I got a job, sure. I stayed through the six months, straight up until the day after the day they took all of the furniture away. I was lucky. I was one of the few who got to stay to the end. A lot of people got sent home that very day. A merry fucking Christmas they had. But I got to stick it out. A fine rat on a sinking ship. Then I had just enough time off to go to my dad's wife's funeral the next week. They say timing is everything, I guess. And while I was out of town, I talked to the folks at my old job, where they just happened to be starting up a crafting magazine and could use my help. So, in all, I had a two week vacation between the death of the dream job and the start of the new one.
But then winter came. And we've been blanketed in snow for five months now with no end in sight. Another storm is coming Thursday. I can't explain the drive except to say that I have to do it for an hour every day and my last job was not just my dream job editing educational books for kids, where I got to learn something new every day and feel like I was contributing to the world and I was constantly busy, but it was also within biking distance from my house so that it didn't matter that I was in the office sometimes sixty hours a week when I could wear pajamas there if I wanted and knew my home, my garden, my cats, my blankets, my sewing machine, my fella, my kitchen were only fifteen carbon-neutral, exercise-friendly minutes away. Now it's dress up, drive, and sit in regimented, republican silence. For thirty-seven point five hours that feel longer than sixty educational, frantic, energetic, spastic hours of book making.
I'm glad to have a job, I am. And I'm glad to have a job that a lot of people would really like to have. After all, on a good day, I get to make craft projects. And write about them. And research them. But that's a good day, and most of my days are spent in limbo while I wait to find out whether or not we're really going to be a real magazine, whether or not we're going to actually launch. And whether or not I'll actually have a job for real. In a town where editorial jobs are slim pickings to say the least. In the meantime, though, I keep wondering if I should switch careers to something more practical. And the clock is ticking loudly, reminding me that I'm wasting time. That my life is on hold. That I'm already a ghost and I don't really know how long I have (because I think about that constantly) to live, so shouldn't I be making the most of it right now? And what am I doing? What am I waiting for? Something is missing. And I can't place my finger on it.
I have been lately, however, obsessed with finding out.
