I spent most of the weekend in a sleep-deprived fog, but by last night I began to feel my head clearing a little. I can say that all the optimist advice is right about taking action. Once you can visualize what specific things to do, things seem--if not exactly hopeful--then a little less grim.
So maybe it would be appropriate to pass along a few things I've learned over the weekend. Granted, I'm no optimist. Yet. I'm not Leo Babauta. I don't have it all together. But maybe something here will help someone, I don't know.
1. It was worthwhile to get out amongst people as soon as possible.
As circumstance would have it, I had to spend most of the day Saturday shuffling paper at a piano event called Junior Festival. I spent all morning and part of the afternoon greeting nervous students and helping keep the scores straight. It was, without contest, the longest five hours of my life.
But it did help to tell my tale of woe to some people not connected to the newspaper business. And it turned out that both my adjudicator and the doorkeeper had their own stories of past severe setbacks. In the doorkeeper's case, the layoff happened soon after they'd built a new house. Yet both were there talking to me, not dressed in rags. Not living out of their conversion vans. So apparently there is some mercy left in the world.
2. The sleep has been getting better with each passing night.
That first night it took me until 2:30 to get to sleep. First I rewound the day's events, then dissected the economic impact. Where can we cut? Can I afford to teach piano or will I have to drop it so I can get a 9-5 job? Will we be able to keep the house? Remember that picture in the New York Times of the sad teenager whose parents had to move into a motel? If we had to do that, we'd have to give away our cats. Irene would cry and cry. No, no, don't do that. Tearing up in bed leads to a headache. Maybe I'll just go down and look at the checkbook. What could we cut? As long as I'm down here, let's turn on the computer. Those porpoises have it figured out, don't they? It's like they know things. Maybe we should worship them. That one who comes close to the camera seems like he's trying to speak to me. (Maybe he's trying to tell me he's a dolphin, not a porpoise.)
I'll have some Tylenol now; I do have that headache.
Then I'd doze off and a little later, a small noise would awaken me. What's today? Oh yeah, Saturday. You have Junior Festival in a few hours. And what was that other new thing? Thirty-three percent pay cut. I'm awake now.
The good news is that the bad news becomes old news after a while, and it gets a tiny bit easier to sleep. The second night, it only took until 1:30 to fall asleep and I didn't keep waking up after that. Last night, I fell asleep as usual but woke up only 2 hours ahead of schedule.
3. Ghoulish as it sounds, there is still a bright side.
A lot of other laid off people can't go back to work without the help of a large factory or firm. If you get laid off from GM, for example, you can't get together with your peers and start making your own cars and pickup trucks. Such is not the case with writing.
4. I have the best family in the world. Spending time with them was the best thing about the weekend.
Many Sunday nights we have a big family supper. In our case, that means Mike and Irene and I, plus our middle son who moved back in after graduation from KU and our oldest, who is into his second year as an artist at a KC advertising company and lives the good life in KCMO. But last night our artist son, Sam, invited us to come and he'd cook for us. I offered to bring wine, but he said no, he had some. Then I thought about it. An optimist wouldn't bring wine anyway. An optimist would bring champagne in celebration of the good. So I hurried out to the liquor store before it closed, imagining myself pounding on the locked doors. "You must open up and sell me some alcohol so I can be an optimist!"
I found some Korbel on sale for $13. In your face, Destroyer!
And then we went over and ate chicken alfredo and salad and sat on his floor and couch, talking about music and various things and it was just the best time. My kids are smart and hard working. Sam's getting established and has done well with his work. Pete, who wants to go to medical school, is smart and hard working and even offered help from his income at the cancer lab where he's working now. (We declined.) Irene is funny and conscientious and I know that no matter what happens, everything is going to work out for them. There's nothing--no amount of evil financial problems--that will ever be able to take the joy of my family away from me.
5. Putting a face on the Destroyer really helped.
It's apt, because like Sta-Puft, Mike's demotion seems soft and benign. But when you look at it, you realize it can hurt you in ways you'd never thought of before. He gets to keep his job, but at a cost. Because of that, I can't really write a lot of what I've been thinking this weekend. (But anyone else is welcomed and encouraged to in the "comments") So putting a picture in my mind of the angry Sta-Puft and then imagining it ablaze actually helps me, in some weird way.
So let's see...How did the Ghostbusters get out of this? Oh, yeah. They crossed the streams.
Maybe that's what we'll have to do, too.
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