Perspective

Been a long time, folks, but I'm doing good for a change. Normally, food poisoning does no good for nobody, but with me, it was like a cleansing.

Yes, I got food poisoning.


Yes, this was after posting about the soul-sucking job and being trapped in an elevator.


I did wonder if I was cursed in some way. For the first 3 hours I was continuously vomiting, I thought, "this is because I don't really believe in God, right? Amirite!?!"


But after the 5th hour, I had some time to evaluate my life. You know, you can only spend so much time thinking "oh my god, how much longer do I have to do this?" I decided that, even though it was the office's favorite lunch spot that poisoned me, I needed a new outlook. I don't have the luxury of selecting from a bevy of ethically superb jobs that will pay me enough to get by. I was a good professor, and I loved my job, and it had a lot of benefits, but it was also draining, paid very little, and took up a lot of my time. Having 200 students a semester who email you constantly, whose papers all need to be graded, whose exams need detailed comments, it was hectic. I have to be thankful for a job that pays more than my old job and requires less intellectual work, less emotional investment.

Not to say that I'm not emotionally invested. I've talked to a lot of people about my new job, and my mom gave me excellent advice. She's the kind of person who believes that things happen for a reason. Sometimes I am too. She said that there is a reason for me to be there. Something I need to learn, something I need to teach someone, some purpose that I should keep in mind. I thought about that. Of all the departments, I was placed in the one department that helps people try to keep their homes. I can make decisions that make it easier for people to keep their homes. I can ask, per my discretion, for the process to remain on hold, for an extremely short window, while people get enough money together to not have their houses sold out from under them. That's some powerful stuff. It's possible that this source of medical insurance and paycheck may be somewhat less alienating than I originally thought.

When my parents divorced, my brothers and I moved out of our house with my mom and my dad lived in the house. He stopped paying the mortgage and it went into foreclosure, giving my mom bad credit for a long time, and making things in general more difficult for all of us. Maybe my experience will give me the empathy that people will need when I'm on the phone with them. Maybe there is a reason this is all happening.

I had this epiphany on the floor of my bathroom. I was there all night, and then spent the next two days recovering. I've never had that bad a case of food poisoning. But after that ritual cleansing, I ended up feeling good about the future. I had an excellent weekend, wherein M and I relaxed and hung out and watched Machete and Nick Swardson's new standup special. I went back to work on Monday and selected a very upbeat playlist for the day and had a good day. I'm getting better at my work and I'm doing good writing when I get home in the afternoon.

Maybe it's not so bad. Maybe it's more like Wolfram & Hart than even I could have predicted.