Keep calm and carry on

I love this poster – not my own design, but a real inspiration of late.

So much has been changing over the last few months – things I've written about here, and a few I haven't – and on Friday another king-sized turd flew into the proverbial fan: when I got to work I found out they'd just announced they're shutting down the whole publishing arm of the company. A full third of the remaining employees will be jobless at the end of the month. That's the real reason our insurance changed – not so much because of the people they've already laid off, but because of the plans to close the press.

Supposedly this will not affect my job, but the blast of adrenaline I've been feeling is not from a surge of confidence, I can tell you. I made little mini-posters of the "keep calm" sign and handed them around on Friday when everyone was freaking out. The owner laughed and clapped me on the shoulder and said, "That's great, thanks for the kind thoughts." I was glad he took it the way I intended it; someone had told me he and the other owners were up in the business office before the announcement, crying. I wouldn't have wanted him to think I was being a smart alec at a time like that.

The main thing this means for me is that I really need to start getting ready to do something else for money and insurance. I was realizing over the weekend that having our insurance go to crap is actually kind of liberating, in a weird way – besides the money (also not great) it's been the biggest tie holding me to this job, and now it's been significantly weakened. There must be other large companies I could work for here ... maybe I could find something to do at Whole Foods. In any case, I'm thinking. But as long as I do have a job, an adequate job that is sort of fun and somewhat creative and only three miles from my house – I'm going to hold onto it as long as I can.

Still ... anxiety. Not the paralyzing kind, which so far I've been miraculously able to keep at bay – but more just the everyday, back-of-your mind kind. The fact that the whole country is supposedly on the verge of a total economic collapse is not helping. And I've been watching the vice-presidential debates and became even more horrified than before at the thought of Sarah Palin having any political power at all at a national level. As someone said the other day, McCain already has at least one foot on a banana peel in terms of his health and age, and that just ... I just can't bear to think of them winning. They just can't!

But really I think it's my lackluster social life more than anything else that is making all this seem bigger and scarier than it needs to. True, I do tend to hermitize ... especially when under stress. But I do other stuff too – I reach out, I get involved, I show up, I make contact, I follow up. And somehow I just have not been able to create the kind of community life here that I grew up believing in (though I didn't realize it at the time). In all the years I've lived here I haven't been able to find more than handful of people who really feel like we belong to each other. Incongruous and sad, but true. Maybe it's because I don't have kids – maybe that's how people find each other at this stage of life.

Anyway, I miss my family, I miss the friends I had in Utah (though almost none of them live there anymore, either). Most of the people I meet here are mostly only interested in making money, drinking wine, and congratulating themselves on their Elegant Wine Country Lifestyle. I'm socially isolated in a lot of ways, for a number of reasons (including my own preference, which I've decided to start indulging a lot less), and it's fucked up and I need to try harder to do something about it. I need to be more accepting of people, more generous with what I see as their flaws. God knows I have them too.

I've been reading Grace Paley and I keep finding my jaw hanging open at some of the things that come out of her characters' mouths. It's a stereotype I'm familiar with from Woody Allen movies, etc., but still I have to keep asking myself: Are there really people in the world who are this frank and outspoken? Personally I can hardly imagine it. How would it be to just blurt out exactly what I think in the moment, without first organizing and rehearsing my thoughts and running them through my offense-o-meter to make sure they present no more than about a 10-12% chance of making someone not like me anymore?

My point being, maybe I'm too reserved with people I don't know well ... Mr. A thinks I am. He's always encouraging me to speak my mind, to let people know me. And I do, when I feel comfortable. I guess the thing would be to learn how to be more comfortable in a wider range of situations.

How to make friends with people I'm not immediately and naturally inclined to like, is the question. Friendships not of the heart but of social and professional utility, in other words ... something I've always resisted, feeling that it would be insincere and even dishonest to spend time socializing and making nice with people I don't like, just because I think they may be "useful." I still feel that way. But maybe I just need to look harder for ways to genuinely like more people. Is that what Jesus is always talking about? Hmmmm.

Anway. Now I'm just rambling. Time to get ready for work.

P.S. I had to come back and say – yesterday I bought a few apples just because the variety had such a marvelous name, Honeycrisp, and wanted to report that they are indeed crisp, and honey-like – super sweet and tart and crisp and delicious – in fact, they are just about perfect, as apples go. Highly recommended.