The Neverending Story....of My Life

There's a harsh reality in appointments. I mean sure, you can make them and break them with ease. You can blow them off, forget them if you didn't mark your calendar, or like me barrage yourself with myriads of post-its all over yourself so that you are forced to gawk at them everywhere you turn. Pink, yellow and other fluorescent colored papers screaming at you to remember a date, a time, a place.

Usually they are meaningless. I mean, sure sometimes those ominous doctor appointments make you want to put skid marks in your skivvies, but mostly it’s the ever mundane checkups or follow ups. Or appointments to have your hair cut, your nails done, your oil changed. Nothing out of the ordinary. A blip in your calendar year.

And yet sometimes you fill up those spaces with truth, with harsher realities. With things that make you hold your breath as the minutes tick down nearer to the hour. Your heart races and you are filled with anxiety that your entire life could change in an instant. That after said appointment nothing will be the same. That time and space will freeze, like Evie made happen in that show from the 80's with a touch of her finger tips and all will be frozen except you and you alone, heart beating louder than a kettle drum in your own ears as you look around at everything as it is NOW, knowing that as soon as it all starts moving again it will never be the same.

Ever since hearing the news of my impending lay-off (insert dramatic DUN DUN DUNNNNN here) I have been in a state of denial. Sure my boss and I had the "talk", but then it was business as usual. Back to the grind as it were. No more mention of the fact that in a few short weeks, days, hours, minutes I would cease to be employed. Thrown out into the Great Nothing, like the Neverending Story. Jobless, incomeless, and screwed.

Today I have my first interview elsewhere at lunchtime and the reality of it is like a kick in the face. It's nothing swanky or exciting really, and as much of an ego boost as it was that I got the call for it the first day I started pimping my resume out, I am not looking forward to it. I love my job here. I don't want to leave. I like what I do, the people I work with. I'm comfortable. It's habitual, routine.

Moreover, I loathe change.

Loathe, fear and utterly despise things going from what I know to the unknown. Could it be better? Maybe. Will it be worse? Likely. Not knowing ties my stomach in pretzel like knots I am unsure how to undo. I lay awake anxious and thinking of every possible scenario. It could be more money, yet farther away leaving me no time with my child. It could be less money leaving me to still find a second job. It could just be a useless interview and a waste of my time. The people could be stuck up Yuppie snots who encompass themselves in only themselves and want nothing to do with helping the "Newbie". It could be a ball-busting, tear-inducing, nose-to-the-grindstone type of place that when I get home all I want to do is pour myself a drink and go to bed. It could be the job of my dreams. Who knows.

But yet as the clock ticks nearer the 3 hours away until I mosey my way across the fair city of Boston to the Financial District, as I stumble through the door to meet my fate, I am going to have to face the fact that it's here. The Great Nothing. If I don't head it off at the pass and find something before it swallows me whole, I'm doomed, my son is doomed, and life as we know it will cease to exist.

It really is the Neverending Story....of my life.