An Empty Urgency

When I lost my job I was terrified. As much as I had longed to separate myself from the company of my coworkers, I had no leads on future employment. It was the most unreal, nebulous week of my life, though not just because I learned on Monday that Friday would be my last. I reacted much better to the news of my impending unemployment than I did to the other, rather more significant proclamation that I would soon be a father, but that's another story. I mention it only to illustrate how fucking scared I was come 5:00 PM that Friday. My final conversation with my supervisor didn't go as well as I'd have liked, and I went home unsure what Monday would bring. At the time, even unemployment seemed like a long shot.

It felt a bit like trekking through the forest at night. You hear rumblings, but you lack the experience to identify them. You're imagination burns like a fire in the night, illuminating the unknown but showing you only the things you fear most. Every windblown branch is the crouching of a tiger ready to strike. Every grating rockfall is the lumbering of a bear stalking lazily after you. You don't know what the dark hides. Not really. So you fear it. Maybe the danger is remote, the distance of a problem that belongs to someone else, or perhaps the eyes of a hungry predator could be contemplating you right now, the danger very, very real. You don't know. That's what it felt like, leaving the shop that day, not knowing what dangers hid in the dark future.

But it worked out. That first check was like a taste of ambrosia. It was a reprieve, a second chance at a life that had been slipping away like sand between my fingers, each grain an opportunity lost, a dream forgotten in the brutal moment of wakening. But there was more to it than that.

The sensation of not having to live according the schedule of someone else, someone who doesn't give a squirt of piss about you, and who you in turn likely despise for the control the exercise over you, is akin to feeling a warm breeze under feathered wings you never knew you had. It's the kind of freedom that children feel the first morning of summer vacation, but is forgotten under the burden of responsibility and age. The freedom of a blank calendar. The freedom to spend your most precious resource in whatever way you wish.

This is where I told myself all the things I'd do with the time I'd been given. Sure, I'd look for work, but no problem if I didn't find something for awhile, right? There were things I'd neglected, important parts of me that had been left to atrophy and needed some exercising. I would write. So many ideas, but my work had been physically demanding and left me exhausted. Now I had all the time in the world... I would read. It had been months since I picked up a book. I'd lose weight. Nothing to stop me from working out every day now. I'd start a business, I'd learn to play the piano, I'd ride my motorcycle, I'd learn something new every day, I'd... I'd...

Suffer paralysis of choice. Do none of those things. Waste weeks of absolute freedom. My days would be devoid of thought and empty of action. My skin would lose its tan, my wit its edge, my passion its heat, my desire its force. And for every day lost, the next would seem so much more important. But the building urgency to capitalize on this rapidly diminishing window of opportunity is directly opposed by the weight of an empty calender. And the dark falls, and the fear returns.

You're probably wondering what the fuck I'm going on about, and hoping I'll clip the flowery rhetoric soon. Maybe you know exactly how I feel, and you understand exactly why I'm writing this. Maybe.