How do we all continue to do it? Wait for good news? Hope for the best? How do we all carry on?
Almost everyone Twinkie and I know right now is waiting for good news, waiting for a breakthrough, waiting for something great to happen so that the future they want will come to them. And almost everyone we know is staying hopeful, energized, positive!
Creampuff had terrible subtenants, and they left her room a shambles and full of insects, and the back deck and kitchen the same. There are still remnants of their drug use all over all the flat surfaces left in the house. But Creampuff went in, looked around, and said - well, I guess I won't be taking a lot of this crap with me to my next apartment and proceeded to cart it all to the side of the road. Now, that is easy to say at 22, but not so easy for the rest of us.
What crap do we take from the past to the future can be determined for us by our experience, but we do have control of how the crap affects us.
I have been dreaming about my previous job for months and months. In my dreams, I am always on the outskirts, outside the door marked "Employees Only", outside the party, not allowed in the front door. In my dreams I am always sad and straining.
Last night, I dreamed that there was a party for previous employees and I was invited. Not to be part of the party or an employee, but to be a guest. To see from a removed position how the company had carried on without me in it. Aside from the incident with the fellow who stole my purse and the time I spent tracking him down and claiming all my stuff back, I had a pretty good time at the party. In my dreams.
Maybe I am ready to move on - which is good because this has been a long haul. Like everyone we know, we wake up and carry on with only faith to guide us to our best lives with our best selves.
And all of our dreams should come true - we are all dreaming for better lives for our families, additions to our families, providing for our families.
And we persevere. And what is interesting to me is that we also laugh and love and live and sing and play while we wait and hope. And our friends have been so incredibly supportive. And the laughter has been so incredibly buoying. It has been the worst of times and the best of times, and sometimes there has been steak!!!!
I feel that some of my friends are in a similar place. We have all had to look around at the stuff we carry with us, and for a lot of it, just say - this is as far as this stuff comes. I move forward with very little, but with what I can afford, love, have, use, keep, enjoy. And with that little, I now build my future.
This week, after 200+ resumes, many many hours of job searches and referrals, I have my first interview. I wonder if people were surprised when I announced it to everyone that I had an interview. I am so relieved and surprised and happy and energized - this means that my past can be seen, I can be seen. And I will tell you that a few months of unemployment can make you feel pretty invisible and immaterial. That too is baggage I plan to leave behind.
The interview is next week and I have no idea how I am going to be the incredible grown-up I said I was in my application. I have no idea how I will sit in the room with the interviewers and retain my composure. Our wonderful friends have all offered to help prep me - I have received pages of notes and info already. There will have to be a lot of meditating, when I arrive two hours early and sit sweating in the reception room. But like my daughter in her room, like my dreams, like most of our friends, maybe I just enter that room after saying goodbye to the junk, the stuff of the past and hello to different and exciting possibilities. And a paycheque, oh how I have missed thee, paycheque.
Wish me luck, wish us all luck,
with love and gratitude
yours in perseverance
Cupcake
