A Bad Move

To preface this story I will start to what happened hours before. During the evening I remember double fisting a pitcher of Goose Island 312 and a growler of 312 that I had a bartender fill up after they ran out of pitchers. The last drink I had before I left the bar was a bottle of Tequila being poured in my mouth / eyes before leaving. After a half hour of crying I decided that it would be a good idea to load up my U-Haul that night. First I decided to make the very bad decision of driving my U-Haul down the alley or about a block. As far as I remember I didn’t hit anyone or anything so that is good I guess. So I started to load it up at 12:30 am. All I truly remember was losing my balance on the stairs and grabbing on to a handrail that was supported by only a single nail. I proceeded to pull the handrail out from its nail and smash it though the very window that it was protecting. Instead of taking blame for my act I decided to take the cinder block that we used to prop the door open and smash the window from the outside so I could blame some unnamed assailant on our building and wouldn’t have to pay for the window. (But later I decided that I could not do that and claimed blame for the accident.) I ended up going to bed around 2 in the morning with little more recollection other than smashing my back on the stairs during an untimely spill.

The next morning I woke at 7:30 to finish moving my bed and a few other select items into the truck. When I opened the back, it appeared that I had taken each item individually, lifted it up over my head and hurled it into the back. Stuff was piled in the both the driver and passenger seat so much so hopping into the truck would be impossible. By 9 o’clock, I had finished organizing my mess from the night before and moving the rest of my stuff. I left so early since my U-Haul statement said I need to return the truck by 3:11, and I had five hours to drive. Predictably the ride was miserable as I forged ahead to get the truck back on time. Fortunately I pulled into the U-Haul parking lot at 3:10 only to discover the drop point was closed on Sundays and all my rushing was for not.

Stuff

The only time you truly realize how much 'stuff' you actually have is when you are moving. I don't think I am a pack rat in any sense of the term, but the more I pack, the more packing I still have left. I have been trying to be good about getting rid of 'stuff' I don't really need, but I always have a side of me that says, 'you may need that if...' Plus I feel bad about throwing perfectly good things away. Yet I have no near term need for Christmas wrapping paper, for example. So far I have managed to get rid of some items I no longer want but are still good. Between my neighbors and my local thrift store, their 'stuff' pile has grown.

On a deeper note, why do we really need all this 'stuff?' All it seems to do is further tie us to where we are. We like to be with our 'stuff.' For some people this is more true than others. One person can be perfectly happy with a backpack and nothing else, while others seem to like having mounds of 'stuff' surrounding them. As I look at all my 'stuff' I realize how little of it I actually need and how it really doesn't make me any happier. If anything 'stuff' is just another reason a person can get stuck where they are. After I essentially decided to take this summer off to reflect on where I want to go and how to get there, I am trying to minimize my interaction with my 'stuff.' I am hoping to closer connect with family and friends and spend a little time away from not only my 'stuff,' but also all the other 'stuff' people deal with in what is often considered a normal life.

EARTHQUAKE!!!

Last night as I dozed, my slumber was disrupted by such a clatter. It seemed if someone was shaking my bed back and forth and my desk was rattling. In my sleep deprived state the first thing I thought of was there was a cougar in my room, as one had been cornered and killed minutes from my house a couple days before. After this initial ridiculous thought fled my mind, I went on to thinking that somehow I was causing the shaking without realizing it. As I sat there confused as all hell, the shaking stopped and I was once again passed out. I had almost forgot about the incident, probably chalking it up to being a dream until my neighbor asked if I felt the earthquake last night. And I was luck enough to live through it and tell the tale.

What to do when you don't like your options?

In my first three days of unemployment I had three interviews. The first was a challenging career forming type of position, for which I have the perfect education and working history to succeed. They seemed very interested in me, but the only problem was that I had a very low level interest in working there. If I called them up and said I really wanted to work there I could start in the next couple of weeks. But the last thing I want to do is get roped into another job that I am not happy in to obtain some sort of short term stability. Then on Tuesday I interviewed at a company that does the exact same thing I was doing at my old job. But in this case I was most likely going to be thrown at the bottom of the deck and left starting over. As I pondered over my future, I decided that it would be a good idea to go out on Tuesday night despite having a phone interview the next morning (it was my 25th birthday). At last glance I saw 4:50 gleaming from my alarm clock. I had set my cell phone alarm at some point during the night to my great dissatisfaction as I rolled over the next morning. I fell out of bed and took a shower and ate in a feeble attempt to sober up. During the twenty minutes of the phone interview, the only thought that flowed through my mind was 'don't let them know you are still drunk.' Despite what I believed to a be a decent performance, the job was offering phone support at a call center. I didn't even know that those types of jobs were still available in this country. I guess I figured that all those jobs had been outsourced to India. So at the end of the steps i took to find a new job I was left with a bunch of opportunities that I had little to no interest in. If only I could find a way to get this severance to extend for the rest of the summer, I would be set.

My First Job: A Retrospective

In my first job I worked for slightly under three years, but in that short time I experienced almost everything there is to experience in the workplace. I saw expansion, promotion, downsizing, demotion, and then complete failure. In a matter of three years our company ran through the entire business cycle. I got to experience all the feelings that go along with the ups and downs of work life. The thrill of promotion and the company doing well. The frustration of seeing my coworkers get laid off or fired and then being thrown back into a a position that I had already advanced beyond. And finally the nervousness and uncertainty that went along with the business closing down and not knowing what was going to happen to my in the short term and whether I had a job when I woke up every morning. I knew I was joining a fast paced industry, but I never expected anything like this.

Unemployed

Today I am officially unemployed. I signed my papers, said my goodbyes, and left that office for the last time. It is strange to know that I will never go back to the place where I had been coming everyday for the last three years. Then on the ride home I started thinking, 'what am I going to do with all my free time?' Then I started thinking about making a list of things that I want to do while I am out of work, like go to this local hot dog stand that is only open during the day. (I know, I have high ambitions) I'm excited about not working while still getting paid. I think that is the real American dream.

The most amusing part of my unemployment situation is afterwards I spent almost the rest of the day on the phone, but I was not talking about losing my job or finding a new one. Rather I was talking about a controversial selection decision made for my rugby team. For some reason the selectors decided that it would be a good idea not to start me for our rivalry game. This shocked nearly everyone that heard about it, so I was getting phone calls from all my teammates to talk about it. While we were talking about rugby, I'm sure I mentioned that I lost my job, but there didn't seem to be much interest in that point.

Finally Some Information

After over a month of speculation about what is going to happen to our company's employees, I finally got some solid answers. It was more of a relief than anything to hear that I lost my job. I knew it was coming and just want to be done with it. Plus I get some severance so that is nice. After I got the news I decided to blow off some steam with an 11 am beer followed by several others to be concluded at about 1 am. Overall it was probably a bad idea, but what the hell, I'm unemployed now.