A very wise man once said..

'I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused...'

Well then occhiblu, my advice is:

when life gives you lemons...squirt the juice in the eye of the motherfucker who told you that you'll be fine.

I have a bubble jar in my desk. . .when work sucks (not sure the nature of your suckiness) I just sit there and blow soap bubbles in the air. . .disregarding what anyone around me is saying about it.

this could help also.

"It's always something."
-Roseanne Roseannadanna

Just don't let it drive you to cilantro.

All weeks suck. It's the weekends what makes life passable.

Except the weekends your beloved has to work for 48 hours straight and doesn't get home until 3 this fucking morning.

Happy wallowing...

Okay, weekends suck too, then. So life in its entirety sucks, start to finish, no redemption. Hardly worth it.

That better?

"He who fucks nuns will later join the church."-The Clash

I feel like that must be apropos of some part of your week, but I could be wrong.

Look, advice I've got plenty of, but it works less and less. I can tell you what I've been doing through a tough couple of weeks--

I've completely taken to ignoring the news (there's nothing good to hear, and the bad stuff I can't change but it depresses the shit out of me).

I've been really severe with myself about the music I listen to, old time ska has been in the mix a lot, and I skip the songs about lost love.

I've been running really hard, in contrast to my usual start slow and taper version of endurance training. Hard workouts that exhaust and exhilirate me. Ok, mostly exhaust.

I've pretty much quit drinking, even in the heat of a Baltimore summer. I like a cold beer and a gin and tonic and a glass of white wine, but I think I feel worse the next day, even if it's just A beer.

The biggest thing, and you may have to find a way to transfer this into your own life, is that I got a book about NC regional potters and pottery out of the library, and I've become obsessed with looking at and making the jugs and jars in there. The pieces are beyond my ability technically, but I've learned a lot, and the attempts have made me feel absurdly brave. Whenever I think bad thoughts for too long I make myself try and work out a problem posed by one of the jugs in the book.

I imagine things will get better, but the imagining is hard work.

[Incidentally, I'm not sure what you've been going through, but I know what I've been going through, and I know that my normal modus operandi is to think something like this to death. The thing is, and I say this as a therapist, getting on with things is more therapuetic than figuring the past out. If there's something I need to address I can do that later, when I don't feel so shitty.]

I hope I didn't take your request too seriously. My radar might be a little off, but, then, so was Joe Strummer's. Wait, no it wasn't. Mine is, his was perfect.

People say "oh you'll be fine" because they want to get you out of the way so they can start talking about them.

Me, I want to know why your week sucked.

getting on with things is more therapuetic than figuring the past out. If there's something I need to address I can do that later, when I don't feel so shitty.

That's wise, OmieWise!

And yeah, occhi...what's going wrong?

I more or less got fired on Tuesday, unexpectedly and unresolvedly. That is, it seems I will not have a job starting some time in the near future, or at least not a full-time job, and probably not even a part-time job, but details have yet to be worked out, or even addressed. And the whole thing happened in a really underhanded way that left me confused and blindsided as well as scared and depressed.

I hated the job, but was hoping to have it for at least the next year in order to pay for grad school, to which I still don't know if I've been accepted, or how the hell I'll pay for it if I am.

The job stress is creating personal-life stress that I don't really want to get into, in a bunch of areas in my life, and it's nothing unfixable, it's just making me feel like I'm sitting at the bottom of a well with no ability to communicate with anyone in any real way, just hearing echoes of chirpy "Oh, it'll be fine" as people pass by above.

And the yogini and counseling-type person in me does know that it's all for the best, and that things will work out, and that there's about a 99% chance that whatever change I make with my life right now will turn out to be better than I could ever have imagined.

But as much as I'm working on it, I've historically not dealt well with transitions, and I'm feeling so beyond overwhelmed right now. And I'm embarrassed about it because it's just a job, right? It should not be fucking me up this badly.

But... it is.

What the hell?? So you went to work on Tuesday and came home with no job? There's nothing worse than feeling taken advantage of and blindsided like that. And it's hard not to feel down on yourself about it.

Oh! So sorry, occhiblu!

I've never really bought that "all for the best" school of thought, but sometimes things are. I will keep my fingers crossed that this is one of them.

Is there anything any of us can do to help? Job hunt or something?

Charmingly, since I telecommute, I spent six hours in a plane on Monday in order to come to work on Tuesday and find out that I will soon no longer have a job, at which point I had to come into work on Wednesday for a day full of meetings about the work I'm doing this week, after which I got to sit in two more planes for seven hours or so in order to come home, where I continue to telecommute until someone, at some point, lets me know what the hell is going on.

because it's just a job, right?

It would maybe qualify as just a job if they'd treated you civilly, and it would still be a big deal. As things happened, pretty much anybody would be overwhelmed, so don't beat yourself up over it.

/unsolicited advice

Which means, add "jet lag" and "crampy and sore from sitting in full airplanes all week" to the list of reasons why last week sucked.

I'm so sorry to hear that things are in a state of suckage, Occhiblu. Hang in there, though.

Hey, occhiblu, it sucks all the way round. It always seems to be the hardest when everything's connected to everything else...and jobs are big connectors, because they provide the financial resources and the structure that support the other stuff. It's so easy to start going 'round in circles and trying to find the lever you pull that gets the whole machine back into gear.

Do you have any position here to negotiate from? Is there a way you can figure out an arrangement with this job that will sustain you through a transition and be to your benefit? I'm wondering if the part-timey deal, or maybe contract work-for-hire or something, could get you through - perhaps in addition to other projects - while you figure the other stuff out?

Anyway, you don't really need advice so much, I don't think. They don't come any wiser than you. Just sit down here and let's bitch and complain for a while, release the poison.

occhiblu, I won't tell you it's all gonna be fine, because a) that's annoying and b) sometimes it isn't. Sometimes facing the fact that this could all go to shit, but that in any case you'll survive (mostly) intact is a great fortifier.

I get through crappy situations by wallowing around a bit, then having a good cry and a long night of sleep. The good stuff looks a lot better in the morning and the bad stuff, while just as bad, is usually a little easier to bear.

I think almost everyone here can sympathize with your feeling of disconnectedness. It can be difficult to really reach out to people face-to-face, to put emotions into words that convey "I'm really not doing so hot right now" instead of "I'm just whining and complaining". That's one of the reasons I like the internet - everything here can be as serious as it needs to be.

most of all, ((hugs)).

Thanks, everyone.

For the practicalities, yeah, I think I'll be able to get some amount of further work or money, either in severance or freelance or something. A number of people in IRC were actually extremely helpful with suggestions on that last week.

So while it's scary financially, it could certainly be worse.

It's just more or less exactly what Miko said -- it's been a while since I've had to look for a job, and I'd forgotten how much of the other parts of your life are tied up in getting paid on some sort of regular basis. And it's that floating, disconnected, tight-rope-y feeling that's making me feel insubstantial, in pretty much every sense of that word.

Well, the problem with people saying it's gonna be fine is that the fineness is off somewhere in the future and meanwhile you have to crawl thru the minefield to get to it. Without a map.

In my case it's "have faith." Altho I do have faith, and said faith has been tested enough that I really do rely on it, I must admit that the waiting period between has definite suckitude to it.
Unless there is a compelling reason, can you go do temp work or something and tell them to go jump before they officially cut you loose? If there is severance that is one thing but I don't usually feel too loyal to a job that will do ya that way.

Life is Pain.

I been saying this on and off for a couple of months or so, and it's one of those maxims that (for me) works on a couple of levels. I'll skip by what I see as the most obvious ones and try and fill in the gaps as to why it works for me.

Actually, I can't. It's something about life being difficult; it's something about stoicism; it's something humorous; it's something about grabbing the balls of death and shaking them till his jawbone pops out; it's something about not believing the hype; it's something about putting your world into perspective; it's something about the surreality of expectation; it's about childbirth and growing up and hunger and jealousy and indigestion and death; it's just something.

I can't really put it into words.
Life is Pain.

Plus, it's a line from the Princess Bride, so it can't be all wrong.

Something along the lines of:

"Life is pain, Princess, and anyone who tells you differently is selling something."

Whenever I didn't get my way as a child, and would complain about how "unfair" it was, my mamma would tell me, "Life's a bitch, and then you die" (hey isn't that a rap song). Truer words were never spoken.

Life's a bitch and then you die/
that's why we get high/
Cause you never know/
when you're gonna go

As long as I'm quoting rap lyrics:

In this game of life I'm not trying to be the M.V.P
'Cause the enemy's the clock and the referee

(((occhiblu)))

Not exactly what I meant, Hugh, but if I wasn't clear: some weekends suck.

"Life is pain, Princess, and anyone who tells you differently is selling something."

Yet it's interspersed with moments of great joy and that makes it worth hanging around for, oh, say 85 years or so.

:^)

Thanks all, for the words and hugs and randomness. (Truthfully, the thought of squirting lemon juice in my bosses' eyes has kept me going today...)

Today's better, and a few leads are starting to shake out, and my office seems disinclined to act particularly quickly on actually letting me go, so... who knows. I'm just trying to remember to breathe, and eat, and stay open.