UPDATING
31 July 2016, 13:02
It’s been and up and down kind of year.
I’ve decided that 2016 was one of my better ones.
I started off the year unemployed, worrying about Doug, and hoping for things to break my way. I did the interviews, which in itself, is a roller coaster ride, one that made me feel superior and worthless at the same time. I missed out on all those little jobs because people passed me over for whatever reason they thought I couldn’t answer a phone or file, and I got second and third interviews for upper management jobs for which I never thought I’d warrant consideration. I was searching floorboards and pockets for change to get shampoo. I was fretting over everything. I was overly dramatic on some things and in denial on others. I was sometimes, inches away from blubbering the days away in a padded room eating soup with a straw.
Now. I sit here watching West Wing with four dogs, one of whom might still be a permanent addition to my little family. I’m designing things on a really stable and groovy mac, and I’m ending the weekend which I can now delineate from the weekday because I have a nice job. I’m not worried about being destitute or homeless; the Doug thing is coming to an end soon, which will afford an opportunity to explore graduating to a higher level of existence – a permanent home and some security; I don’t worry about the fate of Lila, the sweetest of strays. She will either stay here or go to Pawmetto where she will hopefully find a wonderful forever home; and I’m currently experience a low level constant nagging of “what bad thing is about to happened.”
I hate what’s happening politically. I think Hilliary will make a decent president but she doesn’t feel like a catalyst for change. I want change. I want a revolution of progression, where we make some leaps and bounds in social change and welfare. I am scared to death of the election of Trump and what that would mean in concrete terms as well as what this says about us as a society. Are we now angry, petulant and selfish society that devalues knowledge, intelligence and science? Are we now nostalgic for those good old days of racism and isolationism? I hate that we are a fearful, angry society allowing ourselves to be manipulated and duped by a small man who thinks no more of this country than it being another gilded turd he can hang from a chain around his neck.
I am not fearful of the people around me, nor am I particularly fearful of the people who aren’t like me and if I should happening to get my hand cut as I reach out to the world, in accordance to my own values, I don’t regret the blood I would shed. I shed it being the person I am proud to be, demonstrating the values I am proud to have.
Anyway. It’s been a roller coaster, but I am of the opinion it will never stop. So, as I get better at riding it, I get older, year by year. I think about my mortality more and more, and I hold out hope that when I shuffle off this mortal coil, I will be able to continue on in some form or another, adding some value existing long after the my own small journey ends.
Meanwhile. I take joy in the Coca Cola I have next to me, the nice iMac I have in front, the four mutts at my feet and ole Dougie napping in the other room.
