That #%#@*!!! Does It

The weekend after Ann and Mac moved to Sacramento, I was on call for work and had arranged to listen for pages on Saturday, with my colleague to the east handling Sunday. Saturday turned out to be an absolutely gorgeous day; Sunday, of course, was overcast and wintry.

I felt kind of gloomy on Saturday. Right before I woke up, I had a very realistic dream about Lisa and David, which made me sad about their impending departure.

I called the mother ship. Dad said Mom was in the kitchen cooking up a tasty dish and then they were going to watch a Netflick. I felt so lonely after we hung up, and I wished I were there, for the millionth time.

We had been alerted at work that it was likely that some major issue might arise over the weekend, so I prudently stayed near my laptop, as I could all too readily imagine the conversation that would occur on Monday if I was derelict in my duties.

While milling about, I got on my own PC to print out a form from a website. “Here comes your form,” said the status bar, or words to that effect. “Here it comes! Here it comes!” Sure enough, a mere two a half hours later, there it was.

“That #%#@*!!! does it,” I said, and resolved to buy a new PC (or Mac), which will also put an end to my mother guffawing at the limitations of my current system. I told her my PC has 64 Mb of RAM.

“Haw,” she replied.

I also set up my piano keyboard, though it meant my big chair had to be in the center of the room. For a couple of days, I enjoyed playing it, but then began to detect a very annoying high-pitched overtone that occurred when a few notes in the octave above middle C were played. It drove me so crazy, I ended up putting the keyboard back in the closet.

A few days later, Lisa and I had our last monthly lunch, at Medicine. Because it was a special occasion, I had a special lunch: two orders of maitake tempura, and some yuzu lemonade. They’d forgotten to put the sweetener in (evidently); I fixed it with five packages of sugar.

The very next night, Lisa, Tom, David and I had our ceremonial last dinner at Chef Jia’s, where we have been together so many times.

I just finished Naomi Wolf’s The Treehouse: Eccentric Wisdom from My Father on How to Live, Love, and See, which made me completely miserable, which I knew immediately it would do. If I were smart, I would have returned it to the library after reading half the first chapter.

Her father says to follow your passion and that you’ll be happy if you’re doing your art—doing what you were put here to do, whatever that may be; maybe your art is to help people arrange auto loans. This makes me very unhappy because it makes me feel like I should quit my job this minute, which I would absolutely do if I had any sort of plan for what I’d do after that, but I don’t, and I can’t settle on one, because I change my mind all the time.

The options all seem unappealing: Work at a non-profit for WAY less money? Work part-time for WAY less money? Stop working for a year or two to pursue my interests and then hope I can get a job again as I near 50? That seems worrisome. So I end up feeling trapped.

Of course, my view of this job ebbs and flows. In one mood, which I’m in fairly frequently, I would say, well, this job pays decently and allows me to save for retirement, and I work (mostly) with nice and smart people, and I have the freedom to direct my own projects, and I’m always learning something new.

In another, I would say that I took a major wrong turn nearly ten years ago, that I could not be in a situation that is less of a match with my talents and interests, that I don’t have any particular passion for the goals of this organization. That, in fact, my soul is dying here. And I think that’s quite true; right now, I think that.

Then again, who is this I who is so unhappy? Is there an I who can find permanent happiness by arranging conditions to be just so? If “I” get everything arranged just so, how long will it stay that way? Is the thought that my soul is dying anything more than just a thought, fleeting and insubstantial? Is even my feeling of distress anything more than just a feeling that will pass when the next one arrives?

Then yet again, if I had a fairy godmother, I think she might say, “If you want to quit your job, quit your job! If you want to live near your mom, live near your MOM!” One can always choose again if one makes a mistake; so they claim.