Ruminations on 41

 I turned 41 two weeks ago. I celebrated twice, once with friends and again with my sister and a family friend. I let the Facebook wishes roll in, and I tried to respond or "like" to all 175 wall posts (I didn't finish). I barely have any family left, and I'm still feeling some post-pandemic social isolation, so having a "found family" of friends and colleagues means more than it ever has.

I'm trying to put time in perspective, but it's been coming out in random and esoteric ways. A child that was in third grade when the pandemic shut everything down is now starting ninth grade. Most of this year's incoming seniors were born in early to mid-2008, and the incoming sixth graders born in early to mid-2014. I remember sitting at a high school assembly in March 2022, where a group of Ukrainian-American students expressed their heritage as Russia invaded their homeland. They were mostly freshmen, and now they're college freshmen. It's the little things you notice when you're an over-glorified babysitter for teenagers.

Next time: my annual NFL preview.

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All My Friends Were... Somewhere

I'm turning 35 on August 18th. I would probably be more excited, but it has been an oddly lonely summer. I typically have a flexible schedule during the warmer months, and I usually make some effort to meet up with old friends. This year, however it really hasn't panned out. A fair number of DMs on social media have been left unanswered, as have texts and the occasional email.

My fear is probably irrational, but I suppose that when people started whittling down their circle of close friends, I was among the first or second group to be phased out. I almost unilaterally get along with people, but in the vast majority of cases I've been an acquaintance or on the peripheral. While it is natural for friendships to phase out, and this sort of attrition is normal in your 30s, it is the close friendships of years past that I do mourn.

What am I attempting to express, however is hardly a cry for help. If anything, I'm in a wistful mood; my optimism about this sort of thing simply tends to waver. I mention my birthday because I genuinely enjoy when people leave wall posts on and around the 18th. For one day out of the year, I feel unequivocally embraced and appreciated. At some point on the 19th or 20th, that somewhat irrational feeling of isolation resets.

To everyone reading this, I've said it before and I'll say it again: thanks for riding along. I hope you stick around for awhile.

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Summer Dazed

So far, this is not shaping up to be a great summer.

For the first time since 2012, I've been out of work during the warm months. I usually take a temp assignment during summer break, but it has yet to materialize and I fear that it won't anytime soon. I was able to clear out my credit card debt with part of my inheritance (thanks, Mom and Grandma) but I might end up back in debt soon enough. It has been a struggle to stay motivated on various projects. To elaborate:

I'm writing comedy sketches again. For the first time in nearly four years I'm enrolled in a class at Second City; I'm taking an eight-week writing intensive that is offered to conservatory graduates. I had to get a waiver for the course because it'd been so long since I graduated (almost four years ago).

When I'm not dealing with these two family estates, I've undertaken a long-delayed cleaning and organizing project. I have a large (to put it mildly) sports card collection; I've been fishing around for items to sell on eBay *cough* while also buying new supplies to store my cards. Some of the earliest cards in my collection, given to me by my great-great-aunt around 1989-90, were still in old shoe-boxes. Given that the market at a low tide, selling cards on eBay has been an uphill battle to say the least.

I guess there are some perks to being temporarily underemployed: my schedule is flexible enough to enjoy a few day trips, and I'm catching up with reading. Still, with five weeks until the school year starts, I sincerely hope I find some short-term temp work.

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First Responder

This has been, at least on a personal level, a lousy summer.

From March until early August, I held down a temp position at a company that does billing for ambulance services. In the five months I was there, I witnessed a 90% turnover by the staff, near-constant drama (both within the workspace and pre-existing) from certain co-workers, unprecedented managerial incompetence, and a general dearth of "book smarts" in a situation where "street smarts" didn't always suffice. From a personal perspective it was consistent work and challenging without being overwhelming, but the office environment uniquely chaotic.

I'm not sure if I could pinpoint an exact low point in this ocean of drama. Within two weeks of when I started, I had to take a personal day for my father's doctor's appointment. On the day I was gone, there was a catfight in the break room, the woman who trained me on a profanity-laced tirade, the ladies' restroom was trashed, and another woman went into false labor. I came back that next day to see 10% of the desks in the office vacated and a thick air of tension. The manager warned repeatedly before and after "The St. Patrick's Day Massacre" that the drama stays outside the office, but the revolving door of personnel never made that possible.

After about three months in the office, I was put on a special project. I had been working on billing, but they were shifting more people into processing insurance claims. There was a group of 12 or 13 of us assigned to work on three agencies in the Atlanta metro area; about a third of us had to be trained on how to do insurance. There were some growing pains, but in general the people who were transferred into this project were doing okay. The corporate office in Phoenix wasn't impressed, so we were summoned into a conference call meeting one Friday afternoon. They pointed out one mistake after another, some obvious and others that were close calls. One member of the team took an error personally and after the call ended she nearly started crying. Then another member of the team started talking about her troubled teenage son, and the whole thing turned into a therapy session. Suffice to say, it was uncomfortable and preposterous.

Then, on August 4th, it abruptly ended. I was sitting in the parking lot checking my messages when I received a phone call from my temp agency. The fact that they were calling when they did was not a good sign, and my suspicions were confirmed soon after. Initially the company claimed that I had nodded off at my desk --a false and damning allegation-- but they reiterated I wasn't a good fit. I was now a free agent again, forced to budget my money while I was stuck at home with two sick parents. I had hoped to take a road trip or some kind of mini-vacation, but circumstances quashed that quickly. I adore warm weather, but this was one summer where the heat did me no favors.

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