A Burden to the Planet

I did nothing positive. I did nothing constructive. At best, I did a load of laundry. At best.

Last night, I got on a weird sleep schedule. Conked out early, and woke up around 3 AM. Now answer me this – why is it that they save a gem of a movie like Spies Like Us for 4 AM? It’s like the networks are keeping all the fun movies for late at night, cowtowing to the stoners.

Instead of being smart and just going back to sleep, I start posting on WH. I play around on the computer for a bit, and the next thing I know… it’s dawn and the birds are chirping. I spend the better part of the day sleepy and in between naps.

All day today, nothing has kept my interest. Not WH, not UT, not television. Nothing has made me happy or kept me entertained for more than 5 minutes.

Is this what I have to look forward to, when I find myself unemployed on a weekday? I started drinking again about 30 minutes back, and that seemed to change things. Not necessarily good or bad, just changed.

Something that’s been worrying me: I can feel a small wave of sadness lapping at my feet. When I was officially let go last week, I felt good about the whole thing, happy to be freed from the long commute that sapped so many hours of every day. But now – the fear has kicked in a bit. And to top it off, there’s the sense that yet another "area" in my life has deemed me unnecessary, and decided to discard me.

This is the wallowing phase, right? My guess is that my mood today is a sign that I’m lapsing into the whole negative mindset. Deep down, I know it’s a combination of the economy, of timing, of the company’s finances, of circumstance and sales and profitability. But a small part of me says that I was let go because I no longer had any worth at my company, that I ceased to contribute anything meaningful, that I was no longer valuable, no longer useful or worth the money to keep around. Something in the way I was raised tells me that I am unemployed because I failed to make myself more "critical" to the company.

The way I see things, I can’t blame the company or the economy. Currently, the reason I have no job is because I was unable to make myself a useful part of my workplace. My upbringing and inner voice tells me that I am personally responsible for my own obsolescence. The fault is within me; trying to pin the blame elsewhere is, according to this voice, escapist and cowardly.

There are strong parallels here to relationships. I can never look back and say that things didn’t work out because "we were both too different." I look to myself, and find fault in things that I was unable to change about myself. I see who I was, and wonder why I couldn’t bend more. I don’t look back and see unfortunate conclusions; I see personal failings.

Boy. I need to stop drinking.