The First Good Day

Last week, when I was laying in bed reading because I didn’t think I could do anything else and I didn’t want to live in my real life at that moment, I had a feeling that I’d be back at it on Monday. Not because I would feel restored, not because I would find new meaning in the endless emptiness of constantly searching for work and coming back with nothing. Certainly not because I felt hopeful about the outcome of any of my efforts. No, I had decided to move forward, and so I knew that I would.

And that’s what I did. I have some new ideas that I started to implement this week, in the spirit of follow-through more than anything else. I still had no hope of accomplishment. After one full month of daily trying and daily rejection, there is no room in me for hope any more. My resolve on was to run this fucker into the ground. If I can’t succeed, then I will fail as hard as I possibly can. I’ll sell my car, give up my apartment and destroy everything in my life for the simple knowledge that I tried everything. If this isn’t the life for me, then it might as well burn.

And then on Tuesday the weirdest thing happened. Nobody offered me any work. None of my cold calls wanted to talk to me. I posted a market survey and nobody took it. Nobody will probably ever take it. Nothing was markedly different from Monday. I still have no prospects, no paying projects, and dwindling resources. Rent is due in less than a week.

And yet, I had a good day. For some reason, I sat at my desk on Monday in front of a collection of tasks, and I got up from my desk on Tuesday with a profession. Not in the paying sense, but in my gut. All of a sudden, I had my feet under me for the first time in a long time. Even before I was laid off at my old job, everything had changed so much that I spent the last year without the feeling of real work. Which is terrible for someone like me.

From the first job I ever had, I’ve associated work with a fulfillment that no other action can give me. And in the last year and a half, that feeling was gone from my life. I tried to fill it with other hobbies, this blog, for example, but it wasn’t enough. I don’t understand how Monday and Tuesday were different from each other. Except that they were. Maybe the fact that this is my job, that this is what I do now, took this long to sink into my bones.

Writing this from Wednesday night, I can say that the feeling of belonging in this hasn’t really stuck around. I still hold nothing that could be thought of as hope. If I’m good enough to make this work, then it will work. If I’m not, then it won’t. The only way to know is to try and risk failure.

I hated this apartment anyway.