"There are no atheists in foxholes."
That's not entirely true, but it
takes a stronger will than mine to stick to your beliefs when you're in trouble.
At the end of February, I will turn into a pumpkin. That's my double
witching day: my unemployment insurance runs out and, after then, my security
clearance can no longer be simply turned back on, but has to be reapplied for. And
applying for a security clearance is a really, really ugly process these days.
It's not that I especially want to work on secret stuff, but I do especially want
to have a job, since some of the jobs I'm interested in are in aerospace, that's
one of my advantages right now. (Of course, since it hasn't gotten me a job yet,
it could be argued that it's not much of a selling point.)
Rudder,
insane man, gets up to 4:10 (what we think of as "rowing time") to go the gym). I
usually set the alarm for 5:30 on gym days. When I woke up with his alarm this
morning, though, I began worrying over the job thing and my impending deadlines
and couldn't go back to sleep. I don't even believe in petitionary prayer, so when
I found myself muttering, out loud, "Please God, help me get a job," I knew
4AM desperation had set in. (It's amazing how much misery you can save yourself by
realizing how rarely middle-of-the-night panic is justified.) At 5, I finally
decided to get up and head off to the gym. That was when I realized my keys were
missing, complete with gym tag.
Our mailbox is way at the far end of
the block, around the corner. I've been known to leave my mailbox key, with all
the rest dangling from it, in the mailbox door, so I drove by to see if it was
there, figuring that if so, I could head on out to the gym from there. No luck. I
came back home and did one more panic-stricken search, then realized I could have
dropped them in Rudder's car....and he was still at the gym. So I headed over,
talked my way past the front desk, got his keys, and .... my keys were there,
under the passenger seat where he'd never have noticed them. It's always nice when
desperate theories pan out. SO I went in, worked out, and now I'm back
home.
Anyway, I figure fear can be useful, as long as it prods you
into action instead of paralyzing. At least I know I won't skip over my job-
searching activates for today!