Caterwauling

I manage to piss off two people today.

One by saying I don’t talk to my ex-BFF anymore because she voted for Trump. (Which, that was just the final straw. And there was a whole box of straws.) I am guessing the one person who recoiled voted for the asshole.

Another by saying anyone who watches Fox News is a Trump-loving nitwit and that’s the main source of fake news in this world. I know this person is a Trump lover and so is his wife. And one day, I hope she can tell me in very small words someday why women who don’t work hate Hillary so much.

In any event, there may be a third person I hurt somehow and I didn’t mean to if it was in fact my stupid ass fault.

There’s a lot of shit going on right now. Obviously the work is drying up and we’ll all be out panhandling soon enough. But there’s a lot more that I am keeping to myself. Like, my friends who got the boot a lot sooner are dying for the gossip, yet I don’t reach out and touch anyone about it. And I dodge when they do inquire.

I was even telling a friend today, I hear news and retreat to my corner. Then I watch my phone and wait for the texts to roll in. Someone gets fired, give it two hours till an old friend knows and lets ME know. The assets get sold, I guarantee one of my West Coast friends will know before someone down the hall can walk to my desk to fill me in.

There’s another friend I don’t gossip with. At all. But in conversation, I earnestly said hey you might be able to get something useful out of this event, if the stars align. Sit tight and wait.

I trust said person will behave. But I’m not sure if they did here. Because everyone stopped bailing water out of the boat and started rearranging their deck chairs about this particular topic. Because, of all the information spreading around the continent like wildfire, THIS is what concerns them.

The problem is someone got in trouble over it. I don’t *think* it’s my “fault,” as if something so dumb should be assigned any fault. But either way, no matter whose flap was yapping, folks really need to find their zen.

In any event, politics was the theme of the day. If I had the choice to eliminate the kind that runs our country or the kind that ruins our workplace first, I honestly don’t know which I’d pick. I hate me some Trump (obvs) but damn. This stupid shit is less pervasive but so much more personal.

Anyway. Tomorrow I’m not speaking to anyone. I feel like I regret it every single time. I only try to help all parties (and it would in fact help all parties), and it only ends up in a flaming ball of poo.

Now that the unemployment line is staring me in the face, everyone either responds with:

A) OMG what are you going to do?!!?!?!?! #panic

B) Great. You were too smart for that place / it was killing you anyway. Now you can do what you really want to do. Dream big!

I’m not sure which reaction bugs me more. Probably the first one, as it forces ME into a role of trying to comfort THEM and assure them no, I’m not going to drive Stewie into the Intracoastal and meet a watery end. Don’t make me reassure you when I’m the one who’s spinning out. Give ME some hope that the job market really isn’t abysmal, eh?

A friend who used to work with me a lonnnngggg time ago reached out on one of the social media thingies and said she always wondered why I stayed. Too smart for all that, she said. I laughed. I said I stayed because we had amazing people like you hidden in the ranks. It was easy to be a leader when you had people who actually cared about your, and the company’s, success.

I can’t find a job like mine anywhere on the planet. The company that’s supposed to be hiring all of us, well, isn’t. And that was my best bet.

I don’t want to be unemployed. But I don’t want to lose my title or pay, either. That’s why I stayed. Seniority, yo. You get really good at your craft in a niche industry. What happens when you have such specialized skills that they just don’t translate directly anywhere else?

Basically I achieved my dream. So when folks tell me to dream big, well. I set that bar and I met it already.

Look, I’ve been worried about losing this job for six years. I figured it would be my longest-running boss to toss me. He never seemed to “take” to me. And I wasn’t planning to stay anyway. Just wanted to leave for the right thing.

God knows I’ve had offers. Just didn’t hear the right one over the years. Now I’m left to wonder do I go crawling back … or do I dream something up that is completely different — and could completely suck in its own special way?

How do you dream when that’s your mindset? (A little help here, please …)