Saturday, October 16, 2010

Sucks to Be Me

I'm sort of ambling around, aimlessly today. Yesterday was my last day of work at my job. I was surprised how hard it was to leave. The people I worked with in our local office, as well as our regional supervisor, are phenomenal. I don't think I've ever worked with a better bunch of gals. And nobody irritated me, not one of them.

Four weeks of notice is too long. I can change my mind 90 times in four weeks. When I got up yesterday I wasn't sure I wouldn't call my supervisor sometime during the day and tell her I'd changed my mind and wanted to stay. And even now, I get a funny, panicky feeling when I realize I no longer have a key to the office and can't drop in up there to make a copy or fax something anytime I want to. Weird.

There seems to be a thing in my brain that makes me focus, not on what is possible in the current situation, but whatever is no longer possible. A glass half empty sort of glitch in my psychic wiring. I've always been like this. So instead of the euphoria I'd anticipated at the ending of the commitment to a full-time job that felt tremendously meaningless while performing it, I now wander around the house wondering what to do with myself.

I didn't sleep well last night. I recall waking up once with the image of one of my co-workers in my head, followed by an overwhelming sense of loss at the realization that I won't be working with her, any longer. I won't be walking over to that desk to visit with her on Monday. I wish I was different, I really do. And yet, maybe this is a normal grief reaction. I'm not confused about missing the work I did. Or of being a part of the organization I worked for. But there's a kind of Steel Magnolias-type of commaraderie inherent with a group of women in an office. And I miss that when it's not a part of my life.

So, as usual, I have no idea who, what or where I actually want to be in this life. Back in July when planning all of this, I vowed to be ready when October rolled around. I would have a solid business plan backed financially by a sizable savings account. And oddly enough, it's not the money I'm worried about. I'll easily make a living and I do have a little savings. But it's a Catch-22. When I'm in a full-time position, I want to be dead. I honestly start thinking about how nice it might be to be struck down in the street by a FedEx truck (they're bound to have good insurance) rendered disabled and forced to stay home and blog all day. And I know my true path lies in some such vocation. But the second I'm released from this commitment of mainstream employment and free to pursue my "dream life", I turn into a tearful, needy, lost soul, longing for socialization. I didn't expect this, I don't know, depression? I expected euphoria.

I've probably picked the wrong day to quit eating sugar.