This is the End… Or Is It A New Beginning?

I am reminded of one of my favourite zen quotes. I had one of those page-a-day calendars focusing on Zen many years ago with this quote on January 1st of that year (I forget the year, but I think it was in college). Here is the quote:

“There is a beginning. There is no beginning of that beginning. There is no beginning of that no beginning of beginning. There is something. There is nothing. There is something before the beginning of something and nothing, and something before that. Suddenly there is something and nothing. But between something and nothing, I still don't really know which is something and which is nothing. Now, I've just said something, but I don't really know whether I've said anything or not.” ― Ray Grigg, The Tao of Zen

I absolutely loved this quote. I kept that calendar day as it really sparked something in me. It seems non-sensical, but it also says a lot... without saying a lot. If you know what I mean. I don't know if I'm explaining this right or not. I feel this quote as of late in my mind. Quite unsure of what to do now, where to go. Is this an end? Is this a beginning? Is this something? Is this nothing? I honestly don't know.

On Monday morning I went into my work, late yet again. Almost immediately after I came in, my supervisor showed up in my doorway and asked to meet with me immediately in the board room. He handed me a folder with a letter in it and told me to read it. It was a termination letter. I had been let go with 8 weeks of severance pay and the vacation pay accumulated up to that point that I hadn't used.

Tears started welling up in my eyes. I had worked there for almost 12 years. I thought this would be the last job I would ever work at until retiring. Fear started to creep in. I didn't know what I was going to do now. No job, no more extended health benefits, what about my many prescriptions? Rent? Food? OMG! What am I going to do now?

My supervisor left the room for a minute to give me a moment. I'm sure this wasn't easy for him to do, either. The best boss in the world had to actually fire someone. I don't think I gave him much of a choice. He tried to help me out many times. Tried to accommodate me and my various physical and mental health issues. But something was wrong in my mind. I wasn't really enjoying my job. Honestly, I kind of felt stuck there. Like I had no other options but to work there.

I did enjoy some aspects of my job. I loved that we were creating products to encourage both youth and adults to embrace arts and crafts. I loved being in a Mac environment. I loved having my own office. I loved the people I worked with. I loved working on Adobe software. I loved being able to create things, either digital designs or creative projects for the kits we were developing.

But there were things that I didn't love about the job. Things that weighed on me. I felt like I was being pushed aside sometimes. I wanted to do more with creativity, and often expressed that, but found most of the time my job involved menial tasks, like file organizing, setting up projects and timelines and working with Google Sheets to track productions, preflighting other people's works, dealing with printers and clients and sales people who clearly had no idea how print production worked or timelines and just wanted to make the sale. We outsourced all printing and manufacturing to China, which many companies do, but something about that always struck a bad chord with me. It felt exploitative, and certainly was done so things could be made cheaper, but I always wondered at who's expense?

The last couple of years have been rough for most people in this world who deal with production in China. The pandemic hit, shipping container issues started piling up, and entire cities and areas have been locked down. Some people think China is doing this on purpose to hurt the global economy or profit from the total control they have over most other countries and our excessive consumerism. Some people just think the pandemic has shown the world how terrible capitalism is. Costs of living have soared and they are blaming it on the war in Ukraine, or COVID-19, or the Suez Canal blockage last year, or the lack of shipping containers, or environmental catastrophes from climate change, so inflation has set in. Who's making money? The usual suspects, mostly. Who isn't? Everyone else.

All of these incidents, plus losing some key accounts that we used to do huge business with, and noticing the fewer and fewer print productions were getting ordered... well, I've been worried about job stability. Business isn't that great, and it's not going to get any better for quite a long time. Anxiety started to affect me. These are things outside of my control, and certainly outside our company's control. I honestly think we are going through a global change in how we do things. The current system isn't working anymore. I can see the writing on the wall and it didn't look good.

I suppose many of my health issues was related to that anxiety, that uncertainty. I mean, I haven't been taking good care of myself lately, either. Not eating very good. So there is definitely some real reason for my frequent illness. But anxiety and the general feeling of overwhelm I have become accustomed to over the last couple of years hasn't been easy to deal with. I can't sleep at night. I worry about things. I can't help it. It's who I am. I'm too damned sensitive. I wish I could push all that anxiety and fear onto the Universe to handle it all for me, but I think the Universe has its hands full at the moment. If it even has hands.

I am very keenly aware of the stages of grief. It is something that I've become obsessed with over the last few years. Anytime you go through some sort of loss, whether it's a death, a job loss, or something ends, you go through the five stages of grief. Those are Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. Somehow being aware of these stages has often helped me to sort out my emotions and discover what stage I'm in. I was definitely in some form of Denial on Monday, which turned to anger as I drove home. Then felt the sadness overcome me.

Yesterday I had to get up early as I have weekly doctor appointments to get my 3 allergy shots. This is where I first said that I lost my job out loud. I had already let my parents know about it via messenger and text, and mentioned it on Facebook, but I hadn't actually said the words out loud until yesterday. I definitely felt some depression creep in, also anger, and I think some bargaining, as I was very much wondering "why me? Why do these things always have to happen to me? Can't anything ever go right for me? Am I meant to suffer my entire life? When will I ever get a break? FML!" I was also in a bit of a scatter brain mode, as I went to Tim Horton's for a breakfast egg and cheese English muffin, a Boston Cream doughnut, and an orange juice. Then I went to the Superstore to get some junk food and check my lottos, as it was still before 10 and most mall stores weren't open yet. Pop was too much, so I decided to go to Dollarama to get the 1L Diet Pepsi bottles, as they are all under $1 each. I thought I had lost my phone when I got home and thought I would have to go back to all those places again to find it, but luckily it was in my car at home in the cup holder. I started to update my resume and applied to EI. I got a link to join Job Bank, and when trying to fill out my profile, noticed my job title didn't exist in their database.

Today it took awhile to get out of bed. Depression has its claws in me now. Is this it for me? Certainly, my parents aren't really helping me much with this, either. I know they mean well, but they've been adding to my anxiety with some of the messages they've been sending me the last 2 days, that I find it's pushing me into more of the darkness. So yeah, I didn't feel much energy or ability to get out of bed this morning and thought I would just drift today. I have also been putting off cleaning for awhile now and should be using this time to do that, but again, the depression beast has its claws in me at the moment. In fact, I was very defeated this morning. There was nothing…

Suddenly, there was something! Before getting off my ass to clean (which sadly I still haven't done yet), I checked my email while munching on some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for breakfast. (See what I mean by not eating healthy?) In the past year, I have been volunteering with the Community Arts Council of Richmond and the last half a year I've been working on setting up a new project that starts showing on Monday with a reception brunch and opening and all. There's less than a week away until it launches, so there's still plenty of work to do. As of today, all of the 4 other committee members know about my current situation, though I've messaged them all privately about it. After mentioning it to the last one I notified today, she asked me if I was interested in working in animation.

Holy shit! I'm not going to lie to you. It's always been a dream of mine to work in animation or film in some capacity. I've even tried a few times to go to animation school to learn it, but sadly my drawing skills aren't super great, or the homework would be way too much, and I've found it difficult to get my foot in the door. This person has connections, too, to many other studios and has offered to help get the word out. OMG!

Perhaps this job loss was supposed to happen. Maybe I needed a good swift kick in the ass to get out there and go after my dream job. Maybe this is the right time for me to transition into something I might actually love to do.

This has given me some hope. Some. I'm still sensing the depression beast around me and hope it doesn't decide to invade my confidence, but I'm starting to feel a bit better. They always say networking is the best way to find new opportunities. They are so right. I'm so glad I decided to find an organization to volunteer my time with now. I've met some amazing people, and they've all been super supportive and so forth. Volunteering with this organization might even be the best decision I ever made.

Always look on the bright side of life. - Monty Python

Anyways, I suppose I should wind this blog post up. I needed to write it out, as I was feeling quite emotional today and I often find I feel so much better when I blog my feelings out. I know some people think I share too much, but if I don't open myself up at all, I will explode or remain stuck. I might even be slowly crawling my way out of the dark pit I'm in and towards acceptance now.

Thanks for reading, for those who do.