Valentine Steam Room

Not being a big observer of what I snarkily think of as "Hallmark Holidays", I went about the Wednesday February 14th morning by packing up the gym bag and heading out. I wanted to check out the new yoga class while it was in progress, to see if this was going to be my thing or not, and robustly swim some laps and do the jacuzzi-steam ritual. Weekdays at the gym present you with a completely different crowd than the weekend and after-work groups, and there were a lot of the regulars in the pool aerobics class, all over 60 and doing more chatting than kicking & stretching.

Over the weekend a friend had asked me about The Russian, and I had to admit I hadn't seen him in a long time, and the last time I had, he seemed fragile and disengaged. I thought about him this morning, knowing he was one of the weekday members, maybe someone could tell me how he's doing.

Entering the pool area, in the midst of a large class in the pool, without my eyes on, I glide through the noise and fog in the direction I need to go, and almost walk into a man extending his hand to me. It's The Russian, and he's got color in his face, he's smiling and shakes my hand firmly. We both step into the jacuzzi and he is eager to tell me a new joke, "Thees is polite," and while two other women step in behind us, he delivers the punch line with the worst attempt at a Yiddish accent I could ever imagine. Then he explains the joke to me, and I frankly am just so happy to have run into him today that I let him labor on with the tangents just to hear his resonant Moscovian tones burr off the tiled room. If only I could have called my pal so she could hear his voice and know why this unexplained magnetism pulls me in every time. When the heat gets to be too much, I get out and sit in one of the seats beside the pool so I can still hear him telling stories in the jacuzzi, he has a droll sense of humor, and is totally authoritative.

One of these days I am going to get brave and just tell him I want to hear more of his stories, let me write the book, there are hours and hours of his voice to be immersed in, to travel inside the Soviet Union and Cuba and the other places he went as a "consultant". There hasn't even been the occasion in the years I've been acquainted with him to tell him I studied Russian in school, have Russian cats, read Russian literature, studied Russian history...he may have been a Soviet, but he's from Moscow and is Russian. His English is perfect, absolutely perfect. His accent, however, is absolutely 100% Boris & Natasha, Cold Warrior Incarnate. What do you call someone who is completely carried away by vocal qualities (other than ridiculous)?
Today you can call me pleased, and feeling maybe this Valentine-thing has glimmering facets Hallmark could never imagine.

"COMING SOON!!! JOB PSYCHIC ORACLE BALL!!!

"AS SEEN ON TV!!! SUPPLIES ARE LIMITED!!! KA-BOOOOOM!!!"

I love this---a friend just called me after reading the last post (nice response time!) She had some objections to me lumping her in with the laughing at me Work At Home (WAH) friends, and spoke loudly that she had never hung up on me by pretending she had gotten an email. Then her call-waiting clicked on, and she had to go. But, before she rang off, she offered up some JOB PSYCHIC predictions that, by all things holy, I must pass on to the greater world (or the other three people who may read this blog).

THUS SPAKE THE JOB PSYCHIC----
Take the damn job at the other division already.
Keep writing.
Is your resume done yet?
What about baking? Again?
Go to Florida, then all will be clear to you, I swear.
Results uncertain--try again later.
What's wrong with you, enjoy your time off!
I see---I see---a short journey, a short stranger.
Go to the gym! Go again!!
You show much promise in the domestic arts.
Have you wondered about connectile dysfunction?
You said you had a new computer game, right?

and the kindest cut of all---

Jamie Hyneman called for you about a job.

My work at home friends are laughing at me

Almost two weeks into this (a-hem) sabbatical, and I was crawling the walls yesterday. You know how this is, checking your emails at least every 30 minutes, taking your cordless phone with you to the bathroom, hovering by the front windows to spy the first gray hair of your postal worker, finally, being able to tell the difference between the engine roar of the FedEx, UPS, DHL, and the overnight FedEx trucks as they accelerate up the hill past your house. I can hear the chirp of the phone in the kitchen of the lady downstairs.

I get dressed, have breakfast, drink a second cup of coffee, then assess my list of projects to manage for the day. Decide which can be done while listening to very loud music, which can be done while drinking beer, (or combined), which are punishments and which are rewards, and which can be blown off. After telling my pal that I'm at a loss living without a sense of urgency, she suggested doing some of the fun stuff first as punishment.

She is a wise-ass, and I just couldn't force myself to do it. I scoured the bathroom, moved wall-units to vacuum, and then watched a marathon of "Mythbusters". However, I truly am at the point where I cannot watch any more television. Help me, I can't even read.

No secrets that this is a mid-life career crisis. I love all these articles about the new workplace, the no-office office, the tele-commute, the online hookup to home office, the laptop/blackberry wireless universe, be your own Human resource. Cool. I'm down.

Now what? Where's the money? I can do almost anything. Do I need an agent? (enter sabbatical insights here) Oh, it's so clear to me now, here I go...

One of the downsides of being a Renaissance Woman in training is that it's just so hard to choose.

It's easier to say what I don't want to do, but that sounds way too much like sniveling and whining to me, along with the chorus of "You should feel lucky that you can do (skill) and take any opening there is, you---you---poser!"

Annie Lamott is the earthly saint still living that I burn a candle to frequently. And she says that she had to write, because otherwise she was unemployable. If only I had been such a hold-out, but no. When surveying the lush and verdant lay of the Land of Work, the trail that seduces me immediately is the triple-diamond-rated, angels fear to hike, Writer's Life. The one I've been flirting with all my life, but still run from like a 6th grader at the Junior High dance.
Sort of how the thing I want to do the most with my life is a punishment, and so I do the stupid tasks instead; I clean the bathroom instead of paint the landscape. The perfection-thing. So stupid, and the tasks will never ever be done, because like the Golden Gate bridge, once the fresh paint-job is done, the crew just starts over on the side they started.

So to spin a finer point on this, I surveyed my laughing friends for some insider secrets of the work-at-home life, what is the Wisdom of the Home Worker, the Tao of the Desk, how the F do you do this? What leap of mindset is necessary, and how many times did you blow it before succeeding?

"Well-----" they each begin, and I can hear the creak of them leaning back in their at-home desk chair, "first you have to have a cell phone, so you can take work calls while you're driving, at your kid's school parking lot, or on your back porch with your laptop."

Check---cell phone.

"You already have a computer and all the accoutrements (my word) to do business, get some cards printed with all your info, but first decide what you're going to do. What are you going to do?"

Shit. There's that again. "Hey, that's why I'm calling you in the middle of your at-home workday, I need answers! Give me some love here, my friend, you know me, what looks good to you? Be the JOB PSYCHIC, like I was for you!"

It just cannot be a coincidence that they each seem to get an important email at this point, and suggest that maybe I should take a few more days to relax and maybe get loaded or something.
Then they laugh and hang up.

And how come it takes certain people so damn long to post on their blog, anyway??? It's not like they're working, and have anything else to do? Forget it, I already got the mail, no severance check yet. Maybe the reason the Writer's Life is not in my cards is because one of my friends certainly would have driven or flown to my house and banged my head on the wall for me by now. Or any minute now. I better go look outside.

Boundless Enthusiasm

The 'take-away' from the weekend was that I am only going to maintain connections with people who see the higher possibilities---for themselves, for me, for the world, for Portland, for creative people everywhere. Call me a snob, but...part of this whole lay-off experience is to upgrade, right? For all of us? There's just SO MUCH out there.

Okay, the sun was out today again. I become Glenda the Good Witch on days like these, besides the great feeling I got getting the murky basement cleared out. The nice boys from 1-800-got-junk came by and removed all the musty piles in the front yard, and I got to go get a beer and enjoy the remainder of the afternoon. Much happiness. I just thought I should capitalize on the head of steam I was still riding after we closed two stores in 30 days, clearing out neglected areas of my non-work life. Imagine. Boxes of books I had always planned on selling to Powells instead had morphed into future back pain lying in wait in my basement. Let the boys take them to the truck. They picked through them a bit, that was fun to watch. The drawing table from Ft. Lauderdale days went to the curb, too, now replaced by the solid oak display table from the store. My new command center. The yard sale leftovers went, the old futon, flooded basement stuff, and even more evidence of my years in Florida. Soon there won't be much of that left, either. Amazing.

Too bad the got-junk boys don't do dishes, that would really help me out today.

Over the weekend, I finally got to Voodoo Donut, and had a wonderful, compact and powerful Devil's Food donut. My next excursion in the sweets category is to visit Saint Cupcake, hopefully with a friend, and get frosting-faced at this whimsical emporium. Hope they sell great coffee. What's the next baked-good fad? Brownies? Muffins, again? Pie? Sticky buns? Artisan crackers? How about KNISHES? Girl could use a great spinach knish. Or a mushroom kasha.

I have eased a bit into this relaxing-thing. Still focused, still have a list of to-dos, still thinking of checking out that Martha Stewart Housekeeping book at the library, but---my plans have diffused into roping friends into a piss-up sometime this week, catching up on Mythbusters, and putting a few more inches onto the sweater I'm in the midst of. I'll do the resume-building next week, at my new command center. I don't want to run out of things to do too soon.

Workaholic at Large, Seeks Meaningful Activity

Wow, I'm officially unemployed.

This is a profound situation, unknown since 1996, and while enjoying a leisurely second cup of coffee, seems unreal. Up since 6:30am, I've already emailed three people, watched two hours of news, made a list, pretended to go back to sleep and failed, and now am with said coffee and at a loss of what to do first. I applied for unemployment within an hour of coming home from my last day of work yesterday. Income taxes were done last week. I could start sorting through the boxes of flotsam I brought home from the workspace yesterday, which included a hefty supply of cleaning products. There's a great place to start.

I've checked Monster.com, and so fulfilled my job search requirements for today. Dum-dee-dum, what to do, what to do, what to do?

Pathetic, I know. It usually is like this when I take vacation time, a good three days until I can really kick back and be the slacker, a few naps, quality time with pets, and some time tumbling over the Big Life Questions. And some epic Chinese movie rentals with good Hunan and Szechuan takeout.

A dear friend has already tried to get too sentimental about this whole separation from the Company process with me, and I told her I'd call her in a few days to chat. I felt kind of sentimental about a month ago, during the whole 'holiday' period, as I was coming out of shock and seeing clearly how much of the fun part of the job I would lose. But this last week has been all about getting the messy job done, be the good Executor, leave them feeling the task was handled well by the right people, managing the needs of the laid-off staffers. Not entirely in jest, I asked people, "Who am I going to boss around now?" I've been a Boss, a Manager, a Leader of Projects, an Answerperson. Today...what? Who? When I get to be just me, and not jump at the ring of my phone at odd hours, thinking 'it's the store', when my hair is let down, the music is turned up, and I've set down the Company's Agenda for the last time...I'm not totally sure who this person is, what she looks like, or what she wants to do now. Other than rent some Gong Li films and stop by Fu-Jin's on Hawthorne. Perhaps that's all that needs to be on the To Do list today. Tomorrow is 'Cash Paycheck'. Saturday is 'Wrap Party with Co-Workers at 5pm'.

So far, so good.