I just wanted to let any regular Superheroes, etc. readers know that things got really, really busy and then turned really, really slow not because Superheroes, etc. is going dark again - and it isn't - but because I was laid off last week.
It's been a unique, painful, and strangely wonderful experience. Not an hour after I was delivered the news, I received a phone call from a civil service agency offering me an interview. It stunned me. I've been trying to get a civil service job for two years. I've taken 9 tests and haven't received a grade below 90 on any of them. In all that time, I've managed to get only one other civil service job interview. It was for the DMV, and a few weeks later the DMV announced 80 layoffs and sent me a letter letting me know I didn't suck; they weren't hiring anyone. The only other jobs I was offered interviews for were at locations too far for me to get to. Most of them were for jobs in prisons. So just getting a call for an interview was amazing, much less getting it when I got it. Whether or not I actually get the job, I think I'll always be thankful for the timing of the call. It helped me hit the ground running.
The past week and a half or so has basically been for healing. I felt like the bloody, raw gums a pulled tooth leaves behind. Believe me, I'm approaching this whole thing more positively than I've approached just about anything, even things that were unambiguously positive from every angle. The job was a survival job and as my civil service shenanigans reveal, I was desperate to get out. It was a wall. I didn't want to get out this way, but at least I'm out. Still, I worked there longer than I've worked any job: seven and a half years. It's unavoidable. It hurt.
Just to be clear, while I say the past week and a half was "for healing," I've been looking for work and handling all the things the freshly unemployed have to deal with. Believe me, no BS, being unemployed is busy work when you actually deal with the crap you're supposed to deal with. Calling to find out about your insurance, finding out about your retirement, figuring out whether or not you have to cancel your doctor appointments, filing for unemployment, researching Cobra and Medicaid, calling pretty much anyone you owe money and seeing if you have any options (and no, you don't), calling your family and friends to see if there are any ways they can help (e.g. carpooling, laundry, extra food, crap like that), and of course there's finally the remarkably easy and straightforward business of securing a new job.
While I somehow found the inner reserves to handle all of that, I could not bring myself to write about Star Trek: The Next Generation or the trials and tribulations of disgraced samurai.
But I feel things equalizing inside now. So soon, probably at the beginning of next week, you'll see the gears at Superheroes, etc. going again. I just needed a little time. It is amazing how much separation from a thing can hurt, no matter how hard you were fighting to get away from it.
P.S. To friends who also read my list blog List SMASH!, I apologize for using the same Hulk pic again but...come on. How many pictures are there of the Hulk getting fired?
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