Speculating on Cosmic Hangnails
It seems to me that the problem with diaries, and the reason that most of them are so boring, is that every day we vacillate between examining our hangnails and speculating on cosmic order.
– Ann Beattie
Iâve been lodged on hangnail mode for months now, maybe since I was laid off. Part of me misses the constant beat of the corporate drummer. A predictable schedule is more comforting than Linusâ blanket. It gives a fulfillable set of expectations. Take all the expectations, plug them into my Outlook Calendar, set the alarm clock for 5:30 a.m., and Iâll march to the beat of meetings, appointments and phone conferences.
Take away the corporate rhythm section and I start to stumble over my own feet. Stumbling leads to falling. Once the forward momentum is gone then balance is removed and gravity takes over and has its thirty-two feet per second per second way with the remains. Itâs like a gyroscope winding down; it may be easy to ride a moving bicycle but try sitting on that bike going nowhere. That rhythmic pedaling makes the difference between going places and bleeding in the gravel.
There are things that replace that corporate drum beat. I have two days a week scheduled to do veterinary checks on the cats we have up for adoption. My own cats have to be fed, litter boxes must be cleaned, clothes need to be washed, groceries must be bought, doctors have to be visited. Before my bike fell over these chores would have been mere punctuation marks to the text of my daily grind. Now they are the text. I have Satanâs Little Fart Cloud to look after, with her morning pills and evening pills and baths every three days. Her insulin shots must be given at 9:00 and 9:00, which fixes my rhythm and dictates the pace of every other thing I do. Television, that great grater of minds, also helps dictate my pace and gives me a sense of obligation even as it reduces me to rutabaga status. I may have seen the show half-a-dozen times already, but it still gives me a place to be at 5:00, a thing to do, a drummer to march to. Take the pulse of my metaphysical heart and youâll hear a background murmur of Lauren Graham and Kelsey Grammer. I suspect my cardiologist doesnât have any drugs to deal with that abnormality.
No matter what Iâve found to replace that corporate drum beat, at the end of the day I still go to bed nose-down and bleeding in that metaphorical gravel. Last week I got kicked deeper into the gravel when yet another job I thought Iâd be a great match for turned me down (after a really good interview, no less). This week I got booted back into the gravel yet again when a corporate headhunter called me about a âfreshly postedâ position that turned out to be a position I applied for in August and was told was filled in September; when Mr. Headhunter found out that Iâd already applied once for the job he couldnât get off the phone fast enough. Today the House voted down the unemployment extension. Just kick me when Iâm down. I donât think Iâm bleeding enough yet.