(Or MY stupid fucking life)
For those of you who recently received the boot, the pink slip, pink the color of gentleness supposedly to take the sting off of what it contains, take heed: it will require all your strength to navigate mind and body through the angles, the misleading ideas, false loyalties and mania that for a time will only be quieted with alcohol. My name is Peter Kaufmann but I'm now a statistic, in the state of idle - not in any redeemable motion but still running.
You may find yourself here, so take heed: there is much to do and that is how I began this period - motivated to survive, to thrive even - but as the weeks wear on I've stopped striving, now have trouble caring. I stopped after the first ten weeks. "Immature," I have been called. But the infernal buzzing in the head of tedious choices, activities, the furious echoes of reason seem unreasonable. I am here, I am there but the activity is not any damn where at all. I am hyperventilating in the airstrip that has become life - specifically MY stupid fucking life.
Then there is my spouse. The enormity of lamenting regret only gets in the way. Useless regrets that successfully bring me down further. I had plans. As well as huge responsibility. I took on so much, didn't I? Rhetorical. Let's stay the focus; focus a noun. Not to be confused with the verb of the same. Focus yourself. We need an action word to give us motivation, to keep momentum. Yes, that's right. Never slip. I can pretend forever if we have to that we are only ever so slightly downgraded - merely sidetracked. Nothing serious. I will be on top again. I can always go back to Utah or Montana or Michigan or South Carolina...oh God. I will find a new niche, maybe find myself at long last. More BS. Who we know is who we want to find.
My job was my self and that was how I kept my world upright. I am now formless, foolish and fantastically blindsided, looking at a court date. Witness for the prosecution. My best reference, possibly doing jail time.
I loved going to work. I loved my suits, my expensive aftershave, the morning effervescence, my desk, the coffee manned and made by my exclusive assistant, I even must say I loved my co-workers who kept the atmosphere humming at a high frequency necessary for the maintenance of those high numbers, batted about as if they were actual matter. The martinis, the endless menu of hyperbole feeding the ego of the entire group.
I loved coming home after an honest day's toil that felt like the upper strata of gamesmanship. Now home is a prison and I'm doing soft time. I could suffocate on the darkly drama going on in one life lived, now fragmenting or pulling apart, next to another life that looks on with agitation or is it pity? Rhetorical once again but maybe not.
The panic; I haven't mentioned the panic I feel when my beloved asks me what I am going to do today. It's all forced fakery: looking for jobs online, keeping that appointment with the recruiting agency that has many recruits, not so many positions, making some calls to keep the lines of communication open, filling out the unemployment form, going to the bank still in panic, other times with a false sense of devil-may-care denial or then, complete indifference to what appears to be Reality. It changes by the hour - my modus operandi. The lid is coming off...burning with antipathy, unsure, robbed - is it supposed to be like this? I was lead to believe that certain things would be my due.
But all that is apparently over. This new era - "down styling," the newspaper headline reads - is code for bullshit and screams fatuity. The way has always been up. Everyone knows that. Trying to give the downward spiral a new twist may work with some, not with me. Definitely not with my spouse; she signed on for ascension.
On a good day, I take it for what it's worth but others are concerned. I'm starting to crackle. But in this I am not alone. All over the city we are crackling. Our film of endurance is shredding like our credit scores. How long will this last? I wonder throughout the day about the endgame but this gets me exactly nowhere and gives my solar plexus a jab to send me reeling. Takes all I've got to maneuver through the labyrinth of meaningless hours. It would be better to stay in bed, undercover. But that wouldn't look so good now would it? Again, rhetorical. Excuse me, I've forgotten the true meaning of serious dialogue, the give and take of ideas that surround a position. In the end, I've only a fragment to go on - pieced together for yet another day in the state of idle. Or is it exile?
To all of you in a similar circumstance, crumbling under the high-octane pressure that is the good life, take heed: This too shall pass, but that doesn't give much specific advice and certainly no edge. What we know is what we long for. Meanwhile, go to the park, read a paper...I see my precious stock that was supposed to yield our place in the sun as reached a new low. Maybe shop for dinner. Trying to economize, ha, ha, ha...makes me sick, maybe too sick to eat after all. I drown my hunger in the nearest bar where I'm sure to find all of you who also feel the clamor in your head...the sudden need for a cold, dark respite.
The personal has become the political though I am not sure which side I am on or the tactic to use. Should you think that all is lost, again remember, This too shall pass though platitudes will get you nowhere in the here and now of this lamentable pass, take heed...
Hey bartender, Gina honey, can you give us another round? What do you mean my card has been denied...fuck that, I just came from the bank..."
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