Anticipation

I'm very goal oriented. How goal oriented? So much so that I had milestones as to when things were going to happen since I was 11 years old. How successful was I? I married less than a year late from my original plans and had kids 2 years earlier than planned.

Then the Condition hit and the plan went bye-bye.

Regardless, I'm still very goal-oriented. I wake up everyday with a clear idea of what to achieve; external aids like PersonalBrain help me manage these goals. I've never really been laid off before, so these past few days have been interesting. Nevertheless, I still wake up with clear goals to achieve. Except that as of today, they have devolved into a non-quantifiable goal of "find another job before money runs out". I know when I'm going to be in financial trouble - the unquantifiable aspect is in the "when do I find another job?"

Don't get me wrong, there are things to do, kids to take care of, resumes to send out, old friends to go see now that I have the time...but there isn't a single, integrated framework like employment that ties everything together. It's like writing in lined journals everyday and suddenly finding no ruled lines to follow - writing starts getting disorderly and slanting every which way.

I am attempting to build structure from existing pieces, like taking care of the kids and my now-sole-breadwinner sister. Like taking the time to retrain in the tech areas I never had the time to study. Like focusing on my astronomy course. Like doing all the volunteer work I had wished to do more of.

All of it is happening and I'm busy. I was just informed of my site closure on Tuesday, handed in my keys on Wednesday and I'm pulling out of my tailspin and will be lobbing resumes tomorrow or tonight. I'm doing all that I can to remain sane and am moving forward.

But I lack a medium term goal and that's deeply disturbing. It's weird, I have this book on order from Amazon - it's an astrophysics textbook. It's huge, it's expensive and it's apparently very very dense. I ordered after my midterm when I realized my current course's textbook was useless (a sentiment echoed by my classmates) but before I was laid off. It added an element of anticipation in my now-disturbed routine; I know something's coming and I look forward to it.

It just shipped about half an hour ago. Nuts. There goes my element of anticipation.

I obviously have quite a bit to go in developing a new life paradigm that insulates me as best as I can from the vagarities of employment. Time to start a new Brain on my PB4, I think...