View from a Rural Village

My heart is sore and worn.  Nothing big and massive but the typical pinpricks we all experience.  My car has been in the shop for almost 2 weeks thanks to hungry squirrels eating the wiring.  I haven't found a new job yet and am almost to the end of two months of unemployment.  I have been waging a great battle with squirrels trying to live in my attic and walls but ammonia and banging on the walls seems to be helping.  I think I need some spring.  In early times people used tonics at the end of long winters to restore souls.  Maybe I need a tonic.

There are mysteries that add the rhythms to life, set the stars on the tree branches, scent the air with change.  Whispers come in the evening and wake with the dawn.  Just as a child hunting fireflies on a July evening so too do we as grownups search the dark.  I love to walk at night.  The town is quiet and the streets are mine.  Right here right now in my quasi-retirement I am taking back the night.  The absolute joy of not having a job has given me back the night.

I am a free woman.  OK.  Technically I am an unemployed woman but it feels more like free.  Today is the first day and I am somewhat unsure what I feel.  I feel joy.  I feel some concern.  I feel some pressure to lay out a plan, set up some goals--both short- and long-term, and to begin to align schedules. One of my greatest fears is that I have lost the ability to do creative writing and a major challenge to myself is to push myself to sit and write everyday.  This journaling/blogging does not come easy and I'm not very happy with the results.  Maybe it just is what it is.  This is a series of notes to myself about the process of rediscovering the Kay in my life and restoring her to the center.  This is for me. Yesterday I commented to a friend that within me, deep within, is still the Pippi Longstockings that led me into so many adventures and I think I long to pull her back up.  And I know that I really like people and whatev...

Interesting.  Tomorrow is the first day of the last week of my latest and perhaps last full-time job.  I feel like a child with one more week to go to summer.  Like a high school graduate the week before I leave for college.  Like a bride one week before the wedding.  Excited and ready to start a new adventure.  Stunned that I've chosen this path but know that my choice is the right one.  Nervous.  I must open myself to the possibilities of what is to be but still get through the "what is" of letting go and saying goodbye.  I will still see my friends and in this new world of social media it won't be hard to stay in touch.  In short, I guess I'm surprised at how excited I am to be unemployed.