November 14, 2024
Everyday Life in Middletown
Much of this week seems like a slog inside an emotional fog, being the week after the election and all. I don’t intend to dwell on much of that here, as I imagine there will be plenty of commentary in other diaries.
My work day has consisted of a brief meeting with a person we are working with in a community project, and a lengthy, virtual “town hall” about a recent organizational restructure. I’d use the hopelessly-cliché’d corporate buzzword but I don’t want to run afoul of HR by leaking any privileged information. I enjoy my job, and I like keeping it more.
Restructuring of any kind does remind me of the time I was affected (not the official corporate euphemism, but I’m trying to maintain confidentiality again) by a layoff or reduction-in-force. It was an unpleasant six months, especially so because it was a harsh winter and I had teenage and pre-teen children living with me when not living jointly with their mother. They had a front-row seat to some soul-searching and occasionally less-than-role-model behavior from their father during those days.
I look back on that time now as kind of a giant reset. When not co-parenting, I really used the time to turn inward and re-engineer the person I wanted to be, coming out on the other side as a truer version of myself. A more self-aware and authentic person, to traffic some pop psychology terms to go along with the corpo-speak I swear to avoid in daily conversations.
That time also gave me the newfound freedom, at least in my mind, to focus on what was best for me, and actually live by that principle. Consequences be damned unless it was illegal or unethical to others. I’d add “immoral” here too, except I’ve never lived my life by conventional morality in a religious sense. I don’t do church, as I’ve expressed here before. If some have stopped reading at that last sentence, I can deal with that now. Sometime ago, I resolved myself to no longer live my life imprisoned by “what are people gonna think?!” I do still ascribe to a golden rule of treating others as I want to be treated, at the least.
Today is also “foggy” because I was up late last night from traveling to and from a basketball game. It doesn’t seem a brilliant outlook for the hometown five again this year. I got to do a semi-annual reconnect with an old college friend and take my now-adult son along for the ride. My friend is an outdoorsy-guy, so there were plenty of stories of hunting and fishing to keep him from getting bored. My outdoors activities are on the more contemplative side, like hiking and fishing (where there is plenty of idle time to think!) Still it reminds me that my friend’s hobbies and general disposition as long as we’ve known each other are a tell that we didn’t share a vote in the last election. We’ve never really discussed politics, as things once were in polite society, and should probably be but will never truly be again. I also used to be much more conservative politically than now (thanks, kids, and I truly mean that!) and he may assume that we have much in common politically. Or maybe if we discussed it openly I’d be the one in for a surprise. But I don’t really feel like chancing it, as my political fatigue from the last 10-15 years (and especially the last eight!) is high.
My sole public political comment from the last week is a facebook post musing how we could be so dumb. Since I have “the luxury” of not being political for awhile (spoiler: I’m a middle-aged white male if you hadn’t already guessed), maybe I’m going to give that a try. I will always try to be engaged on behalf of others who don’t have that luxury though… it’s part of that “authenticity”, remember?