mental health day

Today I called in sick to work. I'm not feeling unwell at all — quite the contrary. Just needing a break. I had told my boss yesterday that I might be coming down with a little something, you know, needing a sick day. He gave a little smile and said, "You know, sometimes people do get sore throats, and they really need to stay home." It was such a simple little thing he said, but there was so much gentleness and permission in it. I took him up on it by staying home today.

The past couple of weeks have involved a lot of tumultuous concerns about work. Yes, it looks like my job at the Very Large Multinational Corporation will be going away in the next six months or so (maybe the next six weeks — who knows?). The Very Large Multinational Corporation leaders have lots of colorful words for exactly what's happening. My department is not being downsized; it's being redesigned. Our work is not being off-shored; it's being centralized. The upshot is that about 20 people on our 80-member staff of artists across the country will be laid off, and the rest of us will probably be asked later in the year to "centralize" ourselves down to "central Florida." Or, to accept severance packages.

Getting fired has never sounded so lovely.

After feeling terribly conflicted about my job for months, this seems like perhaps some sort of divine push to get the hell out of the company and doing something else. I don't know precisely what that "something else" is yet. But I hope and believe that it will be a good thing.

So I'm asking myself lots of questions lately about what might be next. At the same time, I'm still worried about money and very unclear on whether I can go to grad school now, or if I should just shelve that idea for a while.

Last night I got together for a lovely dinner with Jean and Lalah, two of my favorite, most connected, most lively and authentic friends. Lalah was late but when she showed up she had three dozen roses in her arms, a dozen for each of us. We all looked like prom queens as we were seated at our booth. At one point during dinner, they asked me what was going on with my job. I'd been sharing the rumblings about potential layoffs for a while, and they wanted an update. I took a deep breath and said, "I don't know what is going on with my job, but I do know that I have too many skills and ideas to stay cooped up in this stupid job that has absolutely nothing to do with my values or personality!" And Lalah lifted her glass and said, "All right!" and then we drank to that, and I started to think that even if I don't know what else is around the corner, things are going to be OK.