Make that five million and one

So, for those of you that haven’t heard – and I think that’s still most of you at this point – I have grown tired of hearing statistics and feeling left out by not being a part of them. I am envious no more! I am no longer shut out of this exclusive (but rapidly expanding) club, but can now claim membership and all its privileges!

Yep. I’m unemployed.

I’ve been out of a job for just over a week now. I’ve let a few people know, but I figure after a week it’s about time to get the word out proper. As the old joke goes, I haven’t actually LOST my job – I still know where it is, but now when I go there, there’s some other guy doing it… The details aren’t important. The short version that I’m out of a job, and the bigger story is that I’m not sure how exactly I fit into the “job” world anymore. I have a lot of things to sort out.

As a rule, I don’t talk about my medical issues – the MD stuff, I mean. I’ve never really seen the point. The disease is a fact of my life, nothing’s going to change that, and giving other people all the details about how and where that’s going really doesn’t serve much of a purpose (except to depress people). I’ve been through some changes the past several months (or longer). It’s a progressive disease, and every once in a while, it’s going to progress. I’ve been through it before. Sometimes the changes are so slow that they happen over months and years, so subtly that I don’t even notice they’ve happened. Sometimes there are bigger jumps. One happened during the end of my time in Arizona, leading into my first time back in Sacramento. That’s when I gave up walking as an option, put away the cane, and started using the wheelchair full-time. And that was fine. I’d been fighting that off for a long, long time, and reached a point where I was comfortable with the surrender. It wasn’t just the walking. There was a noticeable drop in overall muscle strength. Those are the strange times. Those are the times when your brain hasn’t quite caught up with where your body has gone, when you instinctively reach for something on a shelf and can’t figure out, for a moment, why your hand won’t go there. Oh…because I can’t lift my arm that high anymore. I forgot. Like I said…strange.

I’ve been very fortunate (and still am) to have the type of Dystrophy that I have and the longevity I’ve enjoyed. Not everyone with MD is as lucky as me…lucky enough to live independently, take care of themselves, drive, carry on a “normal” life. So I accept the changes, when they come, without fits of whining or dismay. As I’ve said before, I can’t imagine what it must be like for someone paralyzed or severely and permanently injured in an accident or combat. To be just fine one day, and to be someone (physically) totally different the next? That would be an unfathomable challenge. Me? It’s not like I’ve ever been “just fine”. This is who I am, and what I know. Changes come, but they come over merciful periods of time. They happen at a speed that allows me to process and work into them. Some faster than others, but certainly none that happen overnight.

The latest changes have really been coming on for a while. There was a time, for example, when climbing in and out of other people’s cars was an easy thing for me. Just grab the car door, stand up from the wheelchair, lower myself into the seat, all’s well. That stopped being easy a good while back, and more recently, has became a giant throbbing pain in the ass. I’ve reached a point where riding with someone else only works in a have-to situation. If my folks are in town and want to go out to dinner, I’ll no longer jump in their SUV with them. I’ll get in my own van, with its handy wheelchair lift, and follow them to the restaurant. I prefer driving to riding anyway. When you spent as many years as a full-time passenger as I did, you enjoy making up for lost time.

My strength has been affected, and that’s led to some side-effects. The heart thing was already happening, but I took a drop in cardio output along the way. The unexpected surprise was my lungs. I hadn’t seen that one coming. I remember the day well when I first really noticed it, and went to my doctor (my regular, non-MD doctor) and asked why I was having trouble breathing. And I got his usual diagnosis. “Huh?” Doctors are retards. Testing indicated my lung capacity had dropped, and I was no longer able to take a full, deep breath – that kind of deep, big yawn breath, I mean. Which makes yawning odd, by the way. I do the yawn, my body reacts like normal, and even though I’m not taking in any more air after a certain point, my mouth still stays open and goes through the motions. Old habits, I guess. So, to be clear, I can still breathe (a fact which I hope is apparent, as I’m sitting here typing this right now), just not in quite as manly of a way anymore. So between heart and lung changes, fatigue has become a problem, and I get winded pretty easy. I’ve been in denial about this for some time, so it’s oddly cathartic to admit it. There’s this, and there’s a whole array of stomach issues that you really don’t want to hear about. And all this has added up to me missing more and more work. It’s made getting to work on time, if at all, a very serious challenge.

Well, at least for the moment, that’s not something I have to worry about.

I want to make clear that this is not some big “woe is me” rant, and I’m not in some deep funk over the whole situation. I had the luxury of knowing for a while that the unemployment thing was likely, so maybe that helped. But when it finally happened, it was not the crushing thing you’d expect. Maybe I’d had time to get used to the idea. Maybe I just realized that I was in a job that made me miserable and worked me to death and was making me miss out on the rest of my life. It felt right. I’ve found my life is broken down into clearly definable chapters, and I can usually sense it when one’s about to end and another begin. This had “meant to be” written all over it, one way or the other. Again, no depression. A few fears, but not many. I feel very positive about the chance to take a good look at my life and what I’m doing with it and start something new, whatever that something new may be.

So for now, I’m one of those people you hear about on the news (or maybe someone you know, or maybe yourself), waiting for that first unemployment check to come. Naturally, this is causing a lot of dramatic lifestyle changes. But I’m not all that bummed about those either. I’m strangely enjoying the chance to reevaluate and reorder my life, and to be forced, for once, to make some of the hard decisions that I’ve kept putting off and putting off while working long hours and coming home too tired to do much else.

Where is it all leading? Good question. At the moment, I’m exploring one possibility with this period of “free time”. It’s possible that this may be the time to quit screwing around and finally get serious about the writing. I’m never going to know if I have what it takes if I don’t even produce enough to make that decision. I have a book (non-fiction) that I’ve been making notes on for some time and have yet to start. I have files filled with screenplay ideas. I have a completed graphic novel script that just needs an artist to get itself off the ground (and it’s one I’m pretty excited about), plus other outlines and partial scripts I need to manifest. Maybe, while I’m working all this out, I can finally do what I’ve always felt I was meant to do, instead of getting by in a career that’s treated me very well but has left me empty and burdened with regret. Maybe it’s time for a real honest-to-gosh mid-life crisis that turns everything around. Maybe. Just maybe.

And along those lines, I do want to try to blog more (to keep the writing muscles going between those hard-fought moments of inspiration), so I need to get this all out so the rest to come will make sense. I’ll try to capture this period of my life on “paper” and see if that’ll help me make sense of it all. I haven’t gotten in a rhythm with any of that yet, but I’ve been understandably distracted.

As I said, this is more candid than I’m normally apt to be about my condition, but one of my problems with being a writer has always been self-censorship. I sacrifice honesty for the sake of the status quo and not upsetting people. If I want to write, I need to write the truth, and maybe it’s time I started living that ideal. So my apologies if this all comes off a little shocking. But it’s my life, and I’m cool with it, and a writer’s first responsibility is to share his life with the world. So…successful test.

The end of things here is that I’m okay. I like challenges these days, and I like to find the opportunities and seemingly crappy situations. Silver linings are everywhere if you look hard enough, and I’m looking. I’ve got some lifestyle adjustments to make, and I’m cool with that. I’ve got a future to figure out, and that emboldens instead of frightens me. I’m feeling good about it all, and looking forward to seeing what’s over the horizon. But I’m taking that journey to the horizon one day at a time. For now, that’s good enough for me.

So, the new chapter begins. Stick around and see where it all ends up. I’m hoping for some twists and a hell of a third act. I’ll let you know how it all turns out.

Onward.