Month: April 2020

One thing I did during the 2020 Pandemic (so far), apart from Going To Costco (TM) and Not Dying (C) was get a job. How did I do this? I applied internally and in preciselyish one week, I will start as a new guy in the same place, which is pretty ideal. Or would be, except for the fact that the world is still holding its breath re: COVID-19.

Still. It was interesting. I had to do all the job things, like provide my resume, I had three online interviews, I even set up my office at home to look a little more professional, using persuasion techniques that I had learned from my man Scott Adams, among others.

All of it added up, apparently, and I got the gig.

I’m ambivalent about it, of course. This was a huge change and still is, but not as huge as actually going out into the world. But I do get to drop my old baggage and I had a hell of a time in Schroedinger’s Gig, employed and not employed at the same time.

Anyway that’s it. It’s not official yet. I mean…I’m off the severance list and I got my congratulations and I confirmed with HR left, right, up down, and through several dimensions that are only theoretical but I won’t think it’s real until I see that announcement email and actually sign on and talk to my new manager.

This here will not stop, though. It’s a part of my new Time Horizon. Never again will all my eggs be in one basket. I was able to climb back in to this one but for how long, who knows, especially with Corona out there.

I am a new man in a new position in an old company but my outlook – that’s the newest thing of all. I’m grateful to have a job, I’m thankful to Ra, the Great Coder, the Simulation, and the Lord, and to just plain Providence – but thankful most of all to have been in that room.

I was there, with those people, with the person from HR, and my boss’s boss’s boss, and I got the news and I went home early and I did all the things and now I’m resurrected and it’s strange. In the context of my employer it’s as though I was killed, buried, saw the light, walked through, and then turned around and said…cool but not yet.

And like so many superheroes and fantasy characters in movies – I brought something back with me from the other side. It’s a superpower called perspective.

As if on cue, the Sun shines brightly through my window and so I decide to wrap this here. No blog entry for two months, then two crap ones in one day? That’s good enough.

Receiving the second cue, the Sun moves behind a cloud, and I bid you, dear reader, adieu, until…

…Later.

I’m writing this now, because today I figured out why I haven’t written anything in here since February 24, 2020. Which is kind of a long time for a guy out of work who was going to practice writing blog entries every day to not actually do that every day but here I am back again, run on sentences and all, so let me try to explain, because it’s interesting.

Yeah, been out of practice. Let me try again.

COVID-19’s been quite a bugbear. Something deep in my slowly unraveling hypothalamus wants me to try to make a joke about bugs and bear markets but that’s as close as I’ll get and it’s pretty fuckin’ far away, just like my time horizon isn’t.

Wait. I just can’t seem to get this right.

This morning I was thinking, I should get my ass back in gear. See, I’ve been slacking off in so many ways basically living day to day, and it occurred to me that all the things I wanted to do – the things that would make life better, were things that didn’t have an immediate payoff.

The reason I wasn’t doing anything: my time horizon had been reset to almost zero, because the universe was on hold and I was thinking I could catch a Chinese superflu that could punch my ticket early on this planet.

Why write a novel?

Why practice blogging?

Why learn to play piano, or get physically fit?

Exactly right – if you don’t have a future then there’s no reason to do just about anything apart from mindlessly reload Twitter, finish Half-Life: Black Mesa, and drink. Which is just about all I’ve been doing, at least that I care to mention here.

Oh, and taking care of my family and not going out of my mind in any other appreciable way, while the more normal people of my acquaintance do occasionally lose it. I get to be the one inoculated to intellecthorrhages.

But today, for some reason, I don’t know. I feel like Tyrion in the last episode of Game of Thrones to contain any elements that were marginally not terrible (take your time to parse that one) and I’m thinking…yeah. I might survive this whole COVID-19 thing.

And if I’m gonna survive that means I’ll be around, and if that mean I’ll be around I’d better start doing shit again and I see my time horizon moving back out, and that’s a good thing.

Unlike this blog entry, which is a terrible thing. I will follow up with something better tomorrow, because I’m reasonably confident…I’ll be here.

Later!