Loss and Real Loss

Well, I haven't written anything lately. I have had a few things in mind to write, but to be perfectly honest. I was just too depressed.

You see, Friday, February 26th, my temp job ended. It wasn't the best job, but it paid the bills and wasn't a complete drudgery. It was an office job at a title insurance corporation. I couldn't have worked there long term because I have too many ideals. Even if they had offered (and I had accepted) a permanent position, I would have been plotting my escape from the place. I cannot work for a corporation or organization whose main purpose is to make money. I do like to make money, but I prefer that the paycheck is an added bonus to an already rewarding occupation. And, for me anyway, an occupation is only truly rewarding when it's chief end is to do good in some capacity. One could say that a title insurance company does do good in some capacity. My response to this would be: Yes, but... Yes, title insurance does protect the bank and sometimes the buyer of a new home against law suits if the title search performed on a piece of property is faulty, but this is not a performance of good for goodness' sake, it is merely symbiosis. You must pay for the protection you receive. They make money, and you are insured against losing money in a lawsuit. Each party's goals are met. It is the relationship of a clown fish and an anemone.

I don't want to be a clown fish. I feel like enough of a clown. I need something better to do.

Regardless, however, of my dissatisfaction with the position I was upset when I found out that I was losing it. Since Elisha is back in school, I have been the primary provider and since job hunting in Columbia has turned out to feel a little more like snipe hunting, the little bit of security I felt in that temporary position made up for most of its flaws. It wasn't so much the loss of the job as the loss of both the solid routine and ease of knowing that we could pay our bills that devastated me. I have always been very uneasy about money. I grew up poor, not destitute, just poor. I lived in a community of poor people and for the most part, no one really noticed or cared how little we actually had. There were a few who did care, of course. There were also a few who really cared. And then, there was my mother, a woman who had grown up in real poverty, in no-running-water-or-electricity-eating-jiffy-pop-popcorn-for-a week-straight-because-there-was-no money-for-food poverty.

My mother is a loan officer in a bank. She is well-liked and everyone whom I have met who has worked with her has praised her astuteness as a banker. Once, she was promoted to the position of branch manager, but the position took up time that she was used to spending with her kids in the evenings and so she demoted herself. She hasn't really looked for career advancement since that time. She is only lower middle class, but she has come a very long way. She never forgets this. Not for one moment. Money, her lack of it, her possible return to destitution, is always at the forefront of her mind. Her fear rubbed off on me. I am terrified to be uncertain about money. I am a person who simultaneously hates the mindless pursuit of money and is terrified of being really poor.

So, I lost my job. I was sad to lose the routine that made life in Columbia seem normal, I was freaked out about money. And, because it was Friday, Elisha was in Washington, D.C. for his weekly seminar at the Folger Shakespeare Library. I was alone.

I laid in bed for nearly an hour that afternoon whining and crying to myself. I tried to call Elisha so that I could whine to him, but he was in class and didn't pick up. As I was fiddling with my phone I pressed a button (what button I couldn't tell you, I'm really not tech savvy in the least) and my phone asked me this question: End All?

And people say God doesn't have a sense of humor.