Crying in the wilderness

I need something good to happen.

I just got assigned a child support payment two days after finding out that a job I was promised will not be materializing.

I'm supporting two people, two dogs, and part of my kid, and I have no idea how I am going to continue to do that for very long.

Tomorrow I file for unemployment.

This is not what I dreamed.

I even pray sometimes, in tiny shameful breaths.  Just "help", usually.  "Help me, God.", sometimes.  I have yet to notice any good news so far.

I'm going to have to do this myself.  Why is it so hard to get that notion through my head?  It seems to be difficult to have faith in my ability to solve my problems.  But that is the only thing that seems to help.  Well, the only thing in my control, anyway.

I control only myself directly.  I must practice controlling other things *through* myself.  That is, practice using the control I naturally have over myself to assert an intended effect on my environment.  That such a thing is possible, I can believe.  That's a start.

I can control my environment.  But to what extent?  That seems likely to be something that comes with practice.

I can control what goes out of my email account, for example.  I can send resumes and issue other correspondence that is clearly a necessary requisite to receiving job offers.  The telephone as well.

Where to send the emails, and *what* to send?  Learning that is only somewhat under my direct control, as I cannot watch and learn every possible opening or need a company may have.  But any work I do in that vein will increase my exposure, which seems vital to a successful process.

This seems clear and obvious enough once stated, but it is necessary for me to take my mind down this path.  Down all the paths that I may have walked before, but that don't stick until I wear them bare, making them easy to walk the next time.

I need to keep reminding myself of the power I *do* have.  In thought and in deed.

Amen.

This is exactly how tired I want to be at 8:20 on a week night.  Tired enough to really be ready to go to bed in two or three hours, but no longer.

All it took was getting up at 6:30 this morning. After going to bed at midnight.  After spontaneously waking up, massively hungover, at 6:30 the previous morning.  After crashing at midnight again.   And spending all day running errands and driving four hours across west Tennessee.   Midnight to 6:30, twice in a row.

That's all it took to make me good and tired.  Plus a painkiller.  Plus one can of beer.

Now I feel nice and tired.  Not exhausted (somehow).  Just relaxed.  Looking forward to bed, but not dreading it for being too near.

Tired enough to not be in denial about my problems, whether to deny them or inflate them.  Tired enough to just.. see them.

The things that suck do, indeed suck.  And the things that rock, rock.  That sounds so simple-minded, so facile.  But it is so very easy to lose sight of.  Maybe it's why wisdom tends to come with age -- as a child, you're full of hope and depression and determination and impatience and all the thousand other words we have for describing various forms of self-deception.

The good and bad always co-exist.  The dog I spent too much to neuter will be much better off and better for me because of it, for example.

Too tired to hope.  Too tired to worry.  Just tired enough to see.

I'm stuck in limbo, and the money's running out.

I'm stuck in limbo, and the money's running out.

Trying to move back to Nashville.

The guy at the recruiting agency assures me that I've got a position to go to, but the employer hasn't specified a start date yet.  This puts me in a bind, as I don't know whether to look for other jobs or commit to this one by renting a place.  Except I can't do that because I don't have proof of employment.

I thought I had the job a week ago (or so.. has it really only been five days?).  The recruiter said that the employer had decided to hire me.  This was great news.  It still is.  But nothing has been signed or sent to me.  The fact is that, right now, I do NOT have a job.