If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.
Scottish Nursery Rhyme
If turnips were swords, I’d have one at my side.
If “ifs” and “ands” were pots and pans,
There’d be no work for tinkers’ hands.
You know how I used to spend a great deal of time whining about my soul-sucking day job and how the only thing that kept me from writing multiple books in a single afternoon was the time I had to waste making a living? I begged my spirit guide to grant all my wishes so I could have time to pursue my true destiny.
Well, dear friends, she came through with a bit of tough love and, as a result, I have reached that dreaded part of life called Put Up or Shut Up Time because the soul sucking day job fired me. A serious misinterpretation of the original text of my wish–or so I thought at first.
Downsized is what they call it. Shitcanned is what it is.
For the first time in over 30 years, I do not have to go to or log on to a regular job! I feel both liberated and terrified. Maybe those two things always go together in varying percentages.
It happened at the beginning of October, and it has taken me this long to come to partial terms with it—before I could get to a place where I look forward to what I can do instead of mourning what I used to do. Of course, what I’m really mourning is the regularity of that reality—the certainty of it. A very boring and lazy way to exist, really, but it served a purpose at the time.
Oh, I’ll still need to do something that brings in a bit of dough so I can continue to enjoy the extravagant lifestyle of a public-school teacher. And the entities to whom I owe money are sort of insisting.
This seems like a good time to mention that I do editing for a reasonable price—not that I’m playing the pity card (unless it is working.)
I also have to mention that I’m sleeping like a baby for the first time in a long time and I’ve lost some tonnage as a result of being able to do yard work and exercise and take long walks—some more things I haven’t done regularly in a long time. Come to think of it–those things were part of my wish, too.
So keep an eye on me. I may implode or explode or maybe I’ll just have fun for a change and that may cause issues. I may take a permanent vacation from worrying and from doing things I don’t want to do which is the source of most of the worrying.
And I may burn a few bridges—or shall I blow them up? Maybe I’ll set off fireworks and send the neighbors a fruitcake and a bottle of wine for no reason at all.
I could sit on the porch and read poems about daffodils and revolution and play loud music with lots of drums.
Or I may do something bizarre.
Who knows?
Wish me luck.
