I’ve had a kind of bad week at the office. To wit, I don’t actually have an office. I used to, working a quasi 9-5 office job in Orlando. It was a job in my field (arts administration) and the work was governmental, so it was decent pay and fairly good benefits. It was also wholly unsatisfying. When my life upended, I decided it was time to leave that job as well.
I quit. I left without a safety net, without a plan, and without any job prospects. Somehow, I’ve been fortunate enough in life to have things work out for me. Sometimes it serendipitous, sometime downright miraculous. Julia Cameron calls it synchronicity.
That’s not to say I haven’t been down and out before. Last year was a big down and out year, and I wasn’t sure that I’d ever get up. Even with that said, within four weeks of leaving my job, I found work. More accurately, my mother knew a guy who just lost a worker, so I was able to step in. Voila! Instant employment.
Turns out, I was pretty good at the work too. Mostly it’s smooth sailing, with very little mental exertion needed on my part. While working there, I’ve been paying bills, taking the occasional travel adventure, teaching, writing, and reorienting myself to what I should be doing. Getting my head right, and my soul in balance, after its misadventures in 2016. Just last week I was starting to look to PhD programs and seeing what other work opportunities might be available to me after I return from Europe.
Which sets up the drama of this week. On Friday, filling in for someone who needed the night off, I had a customer lose her temper with me, walking out and threatening to have me fired. This didn’t bother me so much, as I know she was just blowing off steam, and she has a history of frustrated rants, especially when she comes in forgetting to take her medication. She suffers from a mental instability of some kind, so we all try to remain very patient with her.
Saturday was a busy day, but I think it was uneventful as my week’s negative aspects played out. Sunday, on the other hand, busy and downright awful. I have a coworker who for some reason has this chip on her shoulder towards me. She has a general chip on her shoulder, but it’s even more pronounced when directed in my vicinity. Sometimes she is in charge, but on Sunday she and I were both working the floor. There was this heated exchange, and I had to walk away. Out of the back door and around the building.
Now it takes a great deal to aggravate me, and even more so to make me angry. But at one point I noticed my hands shaking, and I knew that there was nothing good that would come of me engaging anymore with her. Now, the owner has said nothing to me concerning the incident, but the other party has been off since then, and it’s possible he would want to talk with her first.
Then, again, a minor incident on Monday and one yesterday, all leading me to the inevitable query: Is it synchronicity’s way of telling me it’s time to leave?
I haven’t come to a conclusion yet, nor do I think that I’ll reach one prior to leaving on the 24th. I do think that it’s quite interesting that, after eight months of relative quiet, all of a sudden this week it seems to be one thing after another. So I wonder… Is it the Universe giving me not-so-subtle hints that, “Hey. It’s time.”
The last time I ignored the Universe I had a mountain dropped on my head. Figuratively. I do not need that again.
Michael's Musings 