and so it begins

Alas and woe is us. We're part of the latest hip thing, whether or not we want to be.

L and I talked this morning about the loss of his job yesterday. We reflected on how it is a weird mix of bad and good, frightening and freeing, isolating and embarrassing and yet communal at the same time. He's very aware of the negative social messages about losing your job, even if it's with the somewhat mollifying reasoning of being a "layoff" because "there's no work" and so "there's no money to make payroll". Nice and depersonalized, which is just how we like it when we get a big punch in the face.

At any rate, there are a lot of feelings here. Many of them are negative. The experience of losing your job, or losing the main family income, makes you feel like you have dropped out of productive society. It makes it harder to have conversations with people. It makes it harder to know exactly who you are in relation to others. It makes it harder to imagine the future. And it definitely makes it harder to interact with your parents (hi Mom! hi Dad!)

At the same time, I'm suspecting that a little coin that tells me that this is an opportunity for positive change will also periodically come up when I dig into the velvet bag of my current emotions. At least I hope so, or this will be one seriously depressing blog. No, I'm pretty sure there will be some good feelings about this change too. As our President-T-minus-3-days always says, Change! It's what's for dinner!