It's Been A Hard day's Year
A Hard Day’s Year –alternate title-Falling
2007 was a great year, one of the best I’ve had ever. It’s been an all too sobering “hangover” in these first couple of months, and if given a choice, I’d just as soon sit the remaining year out, within some solitary safety realm afforded in a novel idea for “human hibernation”. Just lock the door, curl up (with a “super model”-the fate of karma surely must owe me (chuckles), and place a “do not disturb” sign on my front door. To quote South Park’s Cartman-“screw you guys, I’m going home”. Accompanying background music-“Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me”.
2008, in an exponential counting scheme, the following “highlights” have recently transpired:
• At year’s outset, two stock analyst reports have called for the company responsible for my employ to “pull out” of the United States altogether, as since our merger in year 2004, we’ve only managed to lose no less than several billion U.S. dollars in sum total. The parent company located in Germany, understandably, is more than willing to comply with said proclamation-and who could blame them? One thing is certain, the company I work for today, is destined to look radically different by year’s end-many, many, many will no longer be employed. A couple of weeks ago, 3% of the workforce was lopped off to cries of “blood running in the streets”. This, just in time, for the eventual prognosticated recession many economists continue to insist is looming in all our futures. Pass the Alka seltzer, please.
• I haven’t been to work, short two days Thanksgiving Week, since 6/15/2007. In a “waiting game” of Worker’s Compensation “Mumbly Peg”, I wait (3 months and counting) for additional treatment approval for a twice injured knee to eventually be approved. There are three professions I can’t fathom why a reasonably moral, sentient, human being would partake. 1. Bill collector, 2. Prison Guard, and 3. Worker’s Compensation Insurer Agent. In an acknowledged “open and shut” case, of which the “insurer” has neither contested and previously offered compensation prior to mid November, I find myself more than ready for a scheduled hearing next week. Worker’s Comp Insurers don’t make money by paying claims, and often resort to playing the “waiting game” in an effort to dispirit and disparage the claimant, to either “giving up” or “moving on”. I’m sure, as Kurosawa noted in his 1960 entitled movie, “The Bad Sleep Well”.
• The union pension, the very same one that has kept me at my “train wreck” of a feckless company all these years, intends on “freezing” future contributions for an unspecified time. This is done to comply with recent federal legislation and “cover” bad investments the plan has made. I know, just give me back what’s been placed in it, and we’ll call the deal “even”, ok?
• The “bloom” of a 14 month romance has worn off.
• And so it goes…I’ll have to stay away from tall buildings and sharp objects till things settle.
So why write this? Haven’t we all problems of our own? The “human experience” is rife with platitudes ostensibly offered as advice to “keep it in”, “suck it up”, and “big boys don’t cry”. I’ve played those roles often enough in the past, and to those viewing me in “real life”, I think some/most would be likely to believe this dude’s going to be alright. Indeed, no doubt for I will. Yet, when the “messenger of misery” comes to your door, in unending succession in the continium of “time concentrated”, it can be a bit overwhelming, not in the very least. I’ve concluded, even if no one reads/listens/knows this, and my voice is no more than a faint, inaudible resonance-as if emanating from the depths of some darkened and vast underground cave, the “act” of expression for fears and concerns accompanied with liberal doses of healthy vexation, can at the very least, be liberating as it can be cathartic. The “trick” as it were, is NOT to resist or avoid the problems life may so offer. The “trick” rather, is to accept and “bend”, as reeds in a pond, and still maintain one’s roots and foundation. It is in the realization for the connectiveness of each’s own existence to one another, that redemption may have a chance at suceeding within all of life’s eventual challenges. John Donne once penned, “no man is an island”, as none of us is isolated from one another. My problem is your problem and in reverse. The responsibility for it however, ultimately rests upon myself. Interdependence upon one another, is ultimately the cure for any malady that can befall one.
So, what to do? I’m endeavoring to utilize this “time off” as an opportunity for additional career training in the event my job no longer exists once I’m able to return. I’ve updated my resume, have outlined a series of moves and contingencys, should the need to employ such be called upon. I’ve networked several potential job prospects, should the situation present itself with limited time. I’m comitted to divesting myself, of a few valuable possessions should that need arise. The BIGGEST thing I’ve done, is get over the unfairness, the disappointment in well laid plans having gone awry (you see, another 4 yrs. 10 mos.-and I need never work another day in my life), and realizing no matter what one has done or not done, “there isn’t always a payoff” to be exacted in life. There is only effort, planning, and skill to ensure a greater reliability for such. I continually forget, time and time again, “life isn’t fair”….but soon realize, it’s a lot worse and even more “unfair”, and on many deeper levels, for so many others than-myself! Life has afforded me my share of excrements to be endured, but what is often lost in the moment, life has bestowed me with riches and treasures I couldn’t have reason to have expected either.
I look out my window, and the sun is shinning softly on a freshly fallen snow. Somewhere, at this very moment, lovers are meeting for the first time. Babies are being born, and the aged need suffer no more. Fortunes are being made, academic degrees achieved, and scientifc discoveries offer entreaty for the unknown future. Somewhere down the road, I don’t know where and I don’t know when,while just around a bend or two, there lies a well manicured lawn, with birds singing a melodic tune, with a gentle breeze and soft pastel sunlight gracing over the confines of the pastures within my mind. I know, for I’ve been their often enough, previously.
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