Job Hunting Sucks

I'm still looking for a job.  I know.  In this economy, you're all amazed that a whole month haqs passed and I am not yet firmly esconced in a corner office.  It's just that every day I spend unemployed is another day I spend at home.  It's not easy to repair a marriage when one has to constantly be in contact with one's spouse. 

If it's true that absence makes the heart grow fonder, it's doubly true that familiarity breeds contempt.

I Don't Write As Much As I Should

I started this blog thinking I would have a lot to say.  Silly me.  As it happens, My personality type is such that I am not inclined to share, nor am I naturally attuned to things to let enough in to talk about if I were the sort to talk a lot anyway.

I am extremely introspective, so Shrink says, and I find sharing to be a risky and dangerous activity.

I suppose that the idea here is that the blog affords enough anonymity to allow me a sense of safety.  I can say what's on my mind, because nobody knows me.  I'm still working through it.

I Gotta Get Out of This Place

The worst thing about being unemployed is that you have no place to go most of the time, so you end up sitting at home, driving your family crazy and having them do the same to you.  It's kind of like The Shining.  At least I haven't started seeing twin girls in period costume yet.  But I'm not ruling it out.

I'm getting a lot of yardwork done, but that's hardly the sort of thing that inspires bold and beautiful blog posts.  Hang in there, kids.  I'll think of something to say worth reading soon enough.

Sorry, We Don't Love You Anymore

I got laid-off today.  Made redundant, as our mushy--mouthed friends Across the Pond would say.  Canned, as the workers say.  I saw it coming, but that doesn't really make it any easier to take when the ax comes down.  I'll be okay.  It's not the first time it happened and, as much as I'd like to believe I'm wrong, it may not be the last.  Thanks to foresight, I had already begun looking around, so I have a few irons in the fire.

And it's Friday.  So I'll relax this weekend, post to the blow once or twice, maybe have a bloody mary or two on Sunday at brunch, and come Monday morning, I'll wake up and start hitting up connection, friends, and anyone else I can get to take my call for leads.

Getting re-employed is a job, just like any other.

Mood Swings

I go back and forth about God a lot.  I don't mean that I'm an agnostic, or that I'm not sure if I want to accept Jesus as my personal saviour.  (I don't.  No offense, but he's dead). It's in the Bible; check it out.
 Holy Bible, King James Version Old & New Testaments (with Book and Chapter Index, Searchable)

I mean I go back and forth over the idea that God is an active, present force or is more of a presence in a more passive, general sense.  I am in crisis, in a multitude of ways.  I have been looking around for various ways to guide me out of it.  Prayer, meditation, pharmaceuticals, therapy.  I've done it all. I'm still doing most of it.  But I have come around to the notion that Jim Morrison was right.  "You cannot petition the Lord with prayer."

But I'm still reading and staying open to the notion.

Each Thing's Dying is Another's Birth

A notion as old as history itself.  There is no knowledge of God upon this Earth, but merely supposition.  We cannot know what is beyond our ability to know.  This has been the notion put forward by Bhudda, by Vishnu, even by the ancient Greeks.

Orthodoxy is the enemy of us all.

The Peasants' Gods are More Fun

At least, that's what we learn from the ancient Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, and other early civilizations.  And yet, that's also true to some point today.  Try walking into an Evangelical church in the South on a Sunday morning, and then compare that to First Presbyterian in NYC or Chicago.  As the rich folks walk in to church, you can literally hear the sphincters slamming shut.

Of course, for someone like me who has spent his entire life scorning ritual and worship, convinced that the dogma and the rest would slowly cruch the life out of my soul and the fight out of my spirit, I feel somewhat at a loss.  If I find myself on a Sunday morning sleeping in, and then waking up and playing with the cat, am I celebrating God in the form of a small, joyful creature, one who shares with me the miracle of life?  Or is she just one of the little toys they use to distract you in the waiting room at Hell?

I like to listen to the radio when I actually get up early on Sunday mornings.  I like "Breakfast with the Beatles" on WXRT-FM in Chicago (they also strream on the net, for you who live in less fortunate locations).  Either way, I feel closer to God than I would in some stuffy chapel in a coat and tie, tryiong to stay awake for brunch.